Prague has its Altneuschul and Rabbi Judah Loewe, who created the original Golem; Worms has its Raschi-Haus, where the great medieval scholar is said to have studied. And in America, St. Paul, Minnesota has its Temple of Aaron. It was this Conservative synagogue, legend has it, where Sandy Koufax attended Yom Kippur services instead of pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first game of the 1965 World Series. (For the record, Jane Leavy says in her biography of Koufax that he sat out the game in his hotel room.)
But apart from Koufax, Hank Greenberg, and a handful of others—more or less including Ralph Branca, who threw the pitch that Bobby Thomson hit to give the New York (baseball) Giants the 1951 National League pennant, and Ryan Braun, this year's National League MVP—the sports where Jewish athletes left their marks were boxing and basketball. The most famous Jew in sports of the 20th century might well be not an athlete but a broadcaster: Howard Cosell, who can lay some claim to being the man who made football the most popular game in the country.
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