Reading news of a memorial service for Jimmie Reese in Santa Ana, California in July, some local Jewish baseball mavens found themselves asking why the California Angels were giving their legendary coach of 23 years a final send-off at the Calvary Church. After all, they recalled, the 92-year-old coach had entered this life as James Hymie Solomon of New York.
Among many career distinctions, including a brief stint as Babe Ruth's roommate while playing second base for the New York Yankees, Reese had been accepted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Indeed, in an exhibition game against a team of Jewish celebrities, when pitcher-songwriter Harry Rubi informed his catcher he would use Yiddish in place of hand signals, Reese replied, as he took his place at bat: "Svet dir nit helfen!" - "It ain't gonna help ya!"
The Christian burial was particularly irksome to Gabe Rieger, an Orange County pro-Israel activist who hosts a Jewish cable talk show in the city of Fullerton. Rieger called John Sovono, the Angels' PR director, who insisted that Reese had been interred according to instructions written in his will and carried out by his executrix, a former housekeeper, Mrs. Baker. The body has since been cremated.
Rieger smelled foul play. But halakhically, local Chabad and Agudat Yisrael rabbis advised him, the ball game was over.
Undeterred, Rieger turned to Reform Rabbi Haim Asa of Fullerton. If Rieger could provide the necessary documentation, said the rabbi, he would tend to Reese's reburial. "It's a shonde," Asa told The Jerusalem Report, "that a Jew should be buried as a pagan."
Sheli Teitelbaum/Los Angeles