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Israeli Baseball Team has Sights Set on 2020 Tokyo Olympics

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Israel’s national baseball team advanced to the quarterfinals of the European Baseball Championship being held in Germany, an early Olympic qualifying tournament, as was reported by the JTA. 

Edited by: JV Staff

Israel finished second in its pool with a record of 4-1, losing only on Wednesday to the current European champion, the Netherlands, following victories over the Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany and Great Britain, according to the JTA report.

Israel will meet the France on Friday in the quarterfinals, a round-robin competition. JTA reported that the top five teams will advance to the World Baseball Softball Confederation Olympic Qualifier Europe-Africa tournament in Parma, Italy, which starts on Sept. 18. The sixth team playing in that tournament will be South Africa, which won the 2019 African Baseball Championship.

The winner of the qualifier tournament will get a bid to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The runner-up will have another opportunity to qualify for Tokyo at a future qualifying event, according to the JTA report.

The Israeli team’s roster includes Jewish-American college players and some pros. They had the country’s best showing in the last World Baseball Classic in 2017, surprising many by making the main tournament, where it finished sixth, according to the JTA report.

A report on Thursday that appeared on the From the Grapevine web site indicated that at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, the Israeli team stunned the international baseball community with four straight wins, bringing a sense of history to the tournament. The Israeli team beat Korea in extra innings, shocked Chinese Taipei, defeated Cuba and played the Netherlands twice before falling to Japan in their final game. ESPN dubbed the underdog Israeli team as “essentially the Mighty Ducks, Hickory High and the Jamaican bobsled team all rolled into one.” That winning season is now the subject of a new documentary called “Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel.”

While the World Baseball Classic only requires that players be eligible for citizenship of the country they represent, for Olympic qualifying tournaments and for the actual Olympics players must be citizens of the country they represent, according to the JTA report. The majority of the national team players is Jewish Americans who received citizenship in order to play or Israelis who live in the United States. Among the former pros on the squad are Danny Valencia, 34, and Jeremy Wolf, 25.

 

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