Ask any eight or eighty year old the first image that pops into their head when you mention Rosh Hashanah, and chances are, most will tell you apples and honey. Sure, the shofar’s majestic, plaintive call awakens us to be our best selves in the year ahead, but we are, after all, a food-focused people. That first sticky bite creates a Proustian impression of Jewish life that is the foundation of a lifelong connection to Judaism – not just of the mind and soul, but of the kishkes.
Which is why, as you read this Rosh Hashanah Edition of the shaliyah, I’m here to talk to you about apples. But not just any apple. I’d like to focus on the apple that for me has always stood as a beacon of hope and joy, a bit of sweetness in dark times, and a glimmer of a brighter future (at least since 1980). I’m speaking, of course, of the Mets’ Home Run Apple, which has a surprisingly Jewish origin story!
There are two pieces of core lore when it comes to the apple that pops out of a magic hat every time a Met hits a home run (except for twice when it didn’t, and another time when it popped up for a visiting player, but more on that later!). First of all, why an apple, and not, say, a giant Mr. Met head? Or a life-size replica of Ed Koch? The reason is obvious – the Mets are a New York team, so their home run symbol is a reference to our city’s namesake, THE BIG APPLE. But how did New York come to be associated with that particular…apple-ation (sorry)? Its etymology dates back to the 1920’s, when sportswriters and jazz musicians employed the fanciful term for our fair city.
But the nickname didn’t become synonymous with NYC until an ad campaign spearheaded by the Jewish head of creative for ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Jay Schulberg. Once an aspiring screenwriter (his brother Bud wrote On the Waterfront), Schulberg’s legacy is a string of memorable catchphrases. “Got milk?” “Excedrin headache” “A dry baby is a happy baby” and “Don’t leave home without it” are all Schulberg creations. And it was Schulberg who was tasked by agency head Bill Phillips, who was sick and tired of New York’s waning reputation in the mid-1970’s, with coming up with a campaign to turn the city’s image around. Schulberg saw the apple’s potential – yes, it could represent the garbage strewn all over a struggling city, but shine one up, and what could be a better symbol for a bright, new future? After a meeting with Jewish mayor Abe Beame, the city agreed to the campaign (it didn’t hurt that Phillips agreed to do the work pro-bono). Soon, The Big Apple was on posters and subways, signs and flyers, and before long, it simply became part of the fabric of the city.
If New York City was struggling in the late 1970’s, the Mets were even worse. Tom Terrific had been traded, Doc and Gooden were years away, and the team was an absolute mess. The team needed some magic (their 1980 slogan was “The Magic is Back”), and it was assistant GM Al Harazin who helped shepherd the home run apple into existence. During the team’s continuing struggles, Mets GM Frank Cashen even referred to the apple as “Harazin’s folly.” The original apple (which currently greets visitors from the plaza at Citi Field) was made of fiberboard and stood nine feet tall. The electronics often failed, causing the apple to get stuck, and over time, the apple took such a beating from the weather that layer after layer of plaster was needed just to keep its apple shape intact. It may have been misshapen, malfunctioning, and kind of hokey, but darnit it was our apple, and after decades of appearances courtesy of Dave Kingman and Darryl Strawberry, Mike Piazza and David Wright, as the Mets prepared to move into CitiField, the fans started a grassroots campaign to circumvent the apple’s retirement, and a new, shiny, 18 foot-tall apple was installed in CitiField, where it rises for the likes of Pete Alonso and Juan Soto.
Of course, even the new apple has occasionally malfunctioned, leading to stadium-wide chants of “WE WANT APPLE!!” when it failed in its first year, 2009 (Fernando Tatis) and again in 2017 (Travis D’arnaud). The apple was only raised for a visiting player twice – both times for Darryl Strawberry. In 1998, the Yankees were forced to play a subway series “home game” against the Mets, and when Strawberry hit a home run for the Yankees, the apple was raised part-way, in tribute to the once-great Met. Last year, when the Mets retired Straw’s number, the apple was given a makeover to look like a giant strawberry, with Darryl’s number 18 in the middle (what could be more Jewish than that?).
And what of Al Harazin himself? He did get a ring for the Mets’ World Series victory in 1986, but when he ascended to the rank of GM, he put together a team of high-priced malcontents who became known as “The Worst Team Money Can Buy.” But that didn’t stop Al. He eventually retired from baseball and became a history teacher at a secondary school in the Bronx and eventually at Holyoke Community College in Amherst, MA, sharing his joy of learning with a new generation of students. We could all learn a bit about personal growth and change from the man who brought us the home run apple and the world’s worst baseball team.
So if you’re feeling a little down this Rosh Hashanah, that maybe the task of repentance is a little too hard for yourself or our world in its current state, just remember that even a well-worn, patched-up piece of fiberboard can lift an entire stadium’s spirits by rising up when it’s needed most.
With best wishes for a sweet and juicy New Year,
Cantor Eric Schulmiller
