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Vacation idea: Israel getting professional baseball league
RON Blomberg is going to Israel. This is good news for Israeli baseball fans. For the Palestinians, it could be a learning experience.
And for those like me who don't know who he is:
Blomberg, who played first base and outfield for the Yankees back in the '70s, made history in 1973 as baseball's first designated hitter. This summer, he is scheduled to manage the Beit Shemesh Blue Sox of the brand-new Israel Baseball League. Managers of other clubs include ex-big leaguers Art Shamsky and Ken Holtzman. The league's commissioner is Dan Kurtzer, the former U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv. Trustees include Yankee President Randy Levine and the daughter of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig. Jewish ballplayers will be encouraged to come out for the teams. (Just in case, the league is also holding tryouts in the Dominican Republic.)

Few, if any, Israelis will play the first year: Baseball's never been an Israeli sport. This new league is founded on the "If you build it, they will come" principle. Which, when you think of it, was pretty much how Israel itself got founded.

In 1948, when Israel became independent, the population was 650,000, the biggest industry was orange growing and most people needed government-issued food-ration cards to get by. Today there are more than 6 million Israelis, and the standard of living is similar to the Mediterranean countries of the European Union.

Now, Israel is on an economic tear. Last summer's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon slowed things down for a couple of months, but 2006 still saw 5.1 percent economic growth. New figures out this week show growth at an astonishing 8 percent clip in 2006's final quarter.
It looks like Israel will be able to afford the next round of war after all. I still wouldn't invest in the Israeli stock exchange, though -- they treat it like a blood sport.
Last spring, Warren Buffet bought Iscar, an Israeli blades and machine-tool company, for $4 billion. About the same time, Donald Trump announced plans to erect a 70-story skyscraper outside Tel Aviv.
I guess The Donald doesn't expect a local 9/11, then... or even that Iran will be allowed to shoot off rockets.
These were not sentimental gestures. Neither Buffet nor Trump is Jewish - they're simply investors looking for a profit. Like Ron Blomberg, they look at Israel and see opportunity.
Unlike the Palestinian Territories where, having destroyed their present with a resultant free-falling economy, are now destroying their future as Hamas and Fatah go after one another's universities, a point the writer expands on a bit too long.
Posted by: trailing wife 2007-02-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=181804