A little background from the IBL website, “The Israel Baseball League is the professional baseball league of Israel. In the IBL’s inaugural season, there will be six teams — The Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, The Modi’in Miracle, The Netanya Tigers, The Petach Tikva Pioneers, The Ra’anana Express, and The Tel Aviv Lightning. Among the managers of the IBL’s teams are former Major League stars Art Shamsky, Ken Holtzman, and Ron Blomberg.”

Today from Haaretz:

It may not be the real thing, but Israeli baseball still hits home

By Daphna Berman

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon at the baseball field on Kibbutz Gezer and Lee Weinberg admits he almost forgot where he was. “It kind of reminds me of the field of dreams,” he said, as he motioned to the expanse of sunflower fields beyond the fences.

Weinberg, who is visiting from St. Louis, was referring to the Kevin Costner classic about a farmer who built a baseball diamond in the middle of his Iowa corn fields, a film that made legendary the phrase, “If you build it, he will come.”

Indeed, there was something about the Sunday afternoon scene this week at an Israel Baseball League game that seemed decidedly non-Israeli. There was a line at the concession stand for hotdogs, classic American music wafted in the background and kids scampered about, baseball mitts in hand. Fans, worn out by the sun, cheered lethargically and somewhat haphazardly in English for whoever came up to bat, seemingly oblivious to team affiliation. Only the Israeli flags waving above the fences provided a constant reminder to fans that they were not in Kansas anymore.

To be sure, America’s favorite pastime has come to Israel, if only slowly. Crowds were thin at the Sunday game at Gezer, in which Petah Tikva trounced the Ra’anana Express. Little league games have been known to draw larger audiences, but the crowd - a smattering of summer tourists and American immigrants - didn’t seem to care. For the serious fans, as well as those who just seemed to be enjo=ing the quiet afternoon, quantity - or quality, for that matter - didn’t seem to really matter.

“There’s definite room for improvement,” admitted Richard Bristol, a Denver native, who was attending his first game of the season. “But baseball, wherever it’s played - the U.S., Japan or Israel - is still baseball. It’s a wonderful diversion for the afternoon, an escape from the stress of living in Jerusalem, and it makes me feel like I am back in the States.”

For much of the crowd, the hours spent at Gezer Sunday brought back memories of a life they left behind, some very recently. Sammy Tover, 16, left Los Angeles with his family just three years ago, and though he says an afternoon watching the LA Dodgers is pretty different, “I just really love baseball and it’s fun to be out here.” Tover, who lives in Hashmonaim, is already planning to try out for the league next summer.

Like every baseball game, the Gezer field has its share of die-hard fans, and Julia Basch of Rehovot is one of them.

Basch, who is originally from Chicago, has season tickets; since the start of the league, she’s missed just a handful of games - and grudgingly. Basch cheers so loudly that her favorite team, the Tel Aviv Lightning, invited her to the dugout and signed her baseball at a recent game. She says she loves the sport, the afternoon outdoors and the hotdogs washed down with beer. What’s more, the thin crowd allows her to claim “premium seats” just right of home plate. Leaning back, her feet up on a chair in front of her, Basch seemed on top of the world. “I am hoping to be here for the next 20 years watching them play,” she declared, as she jeered and taunted the umpire.

Basch, in her own words, is a “rabid fan. My children are grown, my grandchildren aren’t interested and my husband won’t come to a game with me. But I come out here and have a great time. You’ve got to respect these guys, out there in the sun, playing their little hearts out.” She then took a short break to dance in her seat along with “Hit the road Jack,” which was blaring from the loudspeakers. Basch’s favorite player is Adam Crabb, a pitcher for the Tel Aviv Lightning, because, she says, he “listens to his mother,” who asked that he wear long sleeves to protect himself from the sun. “Now that’s a boy after my own heart,” she smiles.

The game, which continued on into the early evening, included a “fifth-inning stretch,” as well as a rendition of “Take me out to the ball game,” sung by two teen tourists in the stands. Every now and then with a home run, Aretha Franklin would blast out with “Respect.”

For most of the crowd, though home runs were fun to watch, the Sunday afternoon at Gezer wasn’t about who won.

“We didn’t really know who was playing, but we felt like spending a day at the ballpark,” said David Wapner of Beit Shemesh, who brought four of his children to the game. He says the afternoon is “like being in the States for two or three hours without traveling.”

Wapner, a former New Yorker, admits that the game at Gezer was hardly reminiscent of Yankee Stadium. But he says the Israeli league has its pluses. “It’s not as rigid. Here we have great seats, the kids run around and we’re involved in the action.” Besides, he adds, for his children, who were either born here or were too young to remember anything else, “this is the real thing.”