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Former Harriton Slugger Qualifies For Olympics With Israel Team. Now He Waits For 2021.
Until a few weeks ago, Jake Rosenberg really didn’t need to have July 24, 2020 circled on his calendar. He was looking forward to that day more than any other day of his life. On July 24, 2020, Rosenberg thought that he was going to be entering a packed Tokyo stadium; with his teammates, marching behind the Flag of Israel – the Blue and White – the Star of David. He would be part of the spectacle; witnessed by an international TV audience that would number in the tens of millions.
The former Harriton slugger (Class of 2014) is currently a member the Israel National Baseball Team, which battled its way last summer through three rounds of international competition, and shocked almost everybody by winning the right to compete on the world stage at the 2020 Olympics.
Now Jake Rosenberg is among a staggeringly large group of young, and some not so young people, who for the time being, are not quite sure what they’re going to be doing with their lives.
In a KYW interview, Rosenberg said, “Once [NBA Star] Rudy Gobert got the virus, and all of a sudden they suspended the NBA season, and MLB suspended their season, I just knew the Olympics was coming, it was just a matter of when.”
When asked if after a year’s postponement, are the Olympics still doable for him, Rosenberg responded, “As of right this second I still hope so. Obviously in the next couple weeks I’ll have to try to figure out my life moving forward. I’m 24 years old. I want to start the rest of my life. I want to make some money, get a job, do whatever I have to do. But again at the same time, when am I ever going to get another opportunity like this?
Last June, the Jewish Exponent reported that “Rosenberg, a Lower Merion native and Harriton High School grad, had signed on to play on the Israeli national baseball team in advance of the European Championships this summer, the precursor to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.”
After he graduated from Harriton, Rosenberg attended Alvernia Univesity for two years, and played for their team. Then he transferred to Ithaca College, but did not play baseball there.
In the spring of 2018, following his college graduation, Rosenberg went to Israel on a Birthright trip. by August of that same year he was back in Israel, having made Aliya.
The Israel National Team’s quest to reach the Tokyo Olympics started on July 1, 2019, in Blogoevrad, Bulgaria, where they won all six games in the European B Pool; defeating Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, Ireland and Russia again in the Final.
That win earned the Israelis the right to compete in the European Baseball Championship played in Bonn and Solingen, Germany.
There they faced Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany and Great Britain; and won all of those games. In the last game of that round, Israel lost to The Netherlands. However, the Israelis were able to move onto the Playoffs having finished second in Pool-A.
Israel defeated France in the Quarter-finals. They lost in the Semi-finals to Italy, and they also lost in the 3rd-Place game to Spain, but with a fourth place finish in the tournament, Israel was able to move on to the Africa/Europe 2020 Olympic Qualification Round, which was played in Parma and Bologna, Italy.
There the Israeli team won rematches with Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. But then Israel lost a game to the Czech Republic. In their final game the Israeli Team defeated South Africa. Israel and the Netherlands both finished with 4-1 records, but the Israelis scored more runs in the tournament (34-26) and they allowed fewer, (11-15). So Israel was declared the winner of the tournament, and at that point they had won the right to compete at the Olympics in Tokyo – whenever they are.
No More Jamaican Bobsled Team
The Israeli National Baseball Team has come a long way since ESPN described them as The Jamaican Bobsled Team of the 2017 World Baseball Classic (WBC), a tournament where the Israelis managed to beat “real baseball teams,” like South Korea, Taiwan and Cuba.
Ultimately, Israel took sixth place overall in the 2017 WBC. That was good enough to automatically qualify them for the 2021 WBC (scheduled before anybody had heard of COVID-19 or knew that the Olympics would be rescheduled to take place that year).
The 2017 Israeli WBC team also became the subject of a 2018, critically acclaimed full length documentary called Heading Home.