Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story

Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story is a 2010 American documentary film narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow, and directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Peter Miller. It is about the connection and history between American Jews and baseball.

Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times, wrote that the "warm and enthusiastic" film "not only lives up to its title ... but also delivers a bit extra as well." The documentary received the Best Editing Award at the Breckenridge Film Festival for Editor Amy Linton, the Audience Choice Award at the 2011 Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival, and the Audience Choice Award for Best Feature Documentary at the 2011 Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

The film was written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow, and narrated by actor Dustin Hoffman. It was directed by Peter Miller, a documentary filmmaker known for his previous films A Class Apart, Sacco and Vanzetti, and The Internationale.

Dustin Hoffman does not normally narrate films, and initially turned down the project. But when he looked at the script, he changed his mind, saying: "Oh, this is about bigotry and overcoming anti-Semitism, about discrimination and these issues that I grew up with, that really matters to me".

The film opens with a clip from the 1980 satirical comedy film Airplane!, in which a flight attendant is asked by a passenger if she has anything light to read. She responds by offering an ultra-thin leaflet, saying: "How about this leaflet, Famous Jewish Sports Legends?"

The stereotype of Jews as non-athletic, as well as anti-semitism, are two issues that many Jewish baseball players faced and had to overcome. Noted anti-semite Henry Ford wrote on May 22, 1920: “If fans wish to know the trouble with American baseball they have it in three words—too much Jew.” A number of early Jewish ballplayers changed their names, so that it would not be apparent that they were Jewish.