When Israel fielded its first team at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, nobody expected it to be anything more than a curiosity from a dusty Middle Eastern country with no established baseball culture.

“There was a massive novelty factor about it,” said David Wiseman, a long-time sports fan who runs the Follow Team Israel account on social media. “People were treating it like a joke.”

Turned out Team Israel was anything but — despite its quirky Mensch on a Bench mascot. Ranked last in the tournament of 16, Israel upset top contenders South Korea, Chinese Taipei, and the Netherlands, advancing to the second round and beating Cuba before being knocked out.

“At that point, people were like, ‘Oh, this is legit,'” Wiseman recalled of the team’s shock performance, which made it a darling of the competition. “It changed the way Israel was viewed in the baseball world.”

Nine years and several global tournaments later, Israel is back in the World Baseball Classic for the third time, no longer a curiosity though still a massive underdog.

With the 2026 edition of the quadrennial championship starting up this week, Israel is ranked 19th out of 20 teams, but fields a talent-rich lineup of pros who can compete with the best teams in the world.

And though there is less homegrown talent than in previous years, the team is taking the field as baseball continues to gain momentum in Israel, with more Israeli youth playing “America’s Pastime” than ever before.

“Israel’s team in the World Baseball Classic is the largest platform we have for sports diplomacy in America,” said Ari Veron, head of the Israel Association of Baseball, the umbrella organization charged with developing the sport here. “This really is a chance to unite and bond the entire Israel- and baseball-loving community.”

Ahead of its first game on Saturday against #3 Venezuela, Team Israel is also looking at perhaps its greatest challenge ever, landing in a pool with some of the tourney’s toughest competition for the first round. On the line is a possible demotion from the next tournament if it can’t win a single game.

Unlike Latin America or East Asia, Israel has never quite been a place where baseball has caught on. Its success on the world stage rests solely on the WBC’s rules of eligibility, which allow players to represent a country if they are eligible for citizenship there, regardless of whether they have a passport or not.

For Israel, that means anyone who is Jewish or who has a Jewish parent or grandparent can take the field for the Blue and White, thanks to the country’s Law of Return. It’s allowed Israel to create a roster of overwhelmingly American-born players united by Jewish heritage.

“In theory, it gives Israel access to the entire pool of professional Jewish baseball players in the world, whether it’s major leagues, minor leagues, or unaffiliated ball,” noted Dan Rothem, a former team Israel player and current baseball commentator on Israel’s Sports Channel Sport5. “For the WBC, it’s an obvious way to expand the pool of excellent players that can play in different countries.”

Israel is not the only country to benefit from the rule. Others, like Italy, Great Britain and the Netherlands are also built heavily on heritage talent from overseas. But for Israel, the symbolic weight attached to Jewish identity — particularly in the post-October 7 environment — has taken on a much greater significance.

“It’s awesome to see the tremendous amount of pride these guys have playing together on an entirely Jewish team,” said 70-year-old outfield coach Jerry Narron, a longtime MLB player and manager, and the only non-Jew involved with Israel’s team. “They are really into representing Israel, and there is a lot of excitement on the field.”

Several major league players are slated to make this year’s team one of Israel’s best ever, experts said. San Francisco Giants center fielder Harrison Bader, a Gold Glover, is the newest addition to a team that includes Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer, the first Israeli citizen to reach the major leagues, and Philadelphia Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs.

Kremer, born in California to Israeli parents, is fluent in Hebrew and grew up visiting the country every summer.

They are joined by MLB pitchers Tommy Kahnle, who is currently a free agent, and veteran Matt Bowman, who is slated to play in the Minnesota Twins minor league system this year.

Missing from Team Israel, however, are some of the most successful Jewish baseball stars.

Chicago Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman will play for Team USA, and Joc Pederson, who played for Israel in 2023, did not return. New York Yankees pitcher Max Fried is not playing in the WBC this year.

Pitching coach Alon Leichman, a native of Kibbutz Gezer and WBC regular, was unable to join this year’s squad due to new commitments after signing with the Colorado Rockies, Veron noted.

The only Israeli-born member of this year’s team is outfielder Assaf Lowengart, who played a season with the New York Boulders in the independent Frontier League in 2024 but never advanced to The Show.

‘The Jamaican bobsled team of baseball’

Israel’s unexpected success in the 2017 WBC tournament was the turning point for baseball in a country where the sport is almost completely ignored outside of American immigrant communities.

After the IAB was founded in 1986, a national team played in some low-level European competitions, but generally lacked depth, facilities and funding.

But the 2017 WBC team, dubbed “the Jamaican bobsled team of baseball” by ESPN, helped inject new excitement into the sport. Israel entered the competition ranked 41st but finished as the sixth-best team in the world. Filmmakers made a documentary about the team as it flipped the script for the national program.

“Before that, Israel would have had a struggle to get players from overseas to play. There was a risk of being embarrassed or looking silly,” Wiseman said. “But after 2017, it became something that you’d want to be part of.”

Momentum picked up after that, and the team qualified to be one of the six teams to play baseball in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Olympic rules require players actually be citizens, and several pros, including all-star Ian Kinsler, took on Israeli citizenship in order to join the team.

Israel came in fifth place with a 1-3 record, but simply appearing on that global stage was a “crown jewel” for the country’s baseball program, Rothem said.

It returned to the WBC in 2023 with high hopes, but the former Cinderella story stumbled against some of the world’s top teams.

Seeking exposure to an American audience, Israel got itself placed in a “pool of death” in Miami, facing the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela — teams studded with MLB greats. Israel lost its games against those teams by a combined score of 25-1.

“They were playing against proper baseball All-Star teams,” Wiseman said. “It was just a bridge too far.”

The 2026 competition is no kinder. Between March 7 and 10 at Miami’s LoanDepot park, #19 Israel will face #3 Venezuela, #7 Netherlands, #11 Dominican Republic, and #16 Nicaragua.

Games will be broadcast in Israel on Sport5, but most will be played at 7 p.m. local time, which is 2 a.m. in Israel, so unless Israelis are woken up with a missile barrage at that time, local viewership is likely to be low.

However, the March 9 game against the Dominican Republic will be played at 12 p.m. EST, or 7 p.m. Israel time. Those who tune in may be able to catch the customized Israeli cleats some players will be sporting.

“Pound for pound, this could be the toughest group in the tournament,” Wiseman said. “Winning one game would be great, and anything more than that would be absolutely incredible.”

Rothem, the Israeli commentator, agreed. “If Israel plays up to its full potential, hopefully they can steal a game. But it’s not going to be easy.”

‘If you build it, they will come’

Meanwhile, baseball is rapidly growing in popularity in Israel, said Veron, the IAB president. The organization he took the helm of last summer oversees virtually everything to do with the sport in the country, from kids’ little league games to Team Israel’s overseas “sports diplomacy.”

The numbers are not huge to start with. IAB has about 500 players of different ages spread across teams in 11 cities around the country, Veron said. There are just five baseball fields in Israel, and zero stadiums.

But insiders say Veron, an experienced businessman, brings a new energy to the association. Since becoming president in July, the IAB has been implementing a “total rebuild,” making strategic decisions focused on building up the sport in Israel.

Since joining, the IAB has assigned regional directors to each city to coordinate staffing and logistics, and pushed to train more coaches who can lead teams. The association is working to add fields and an indoor training facility, and tap an American donor base for scholarships, travel and infrastructure to help grow. The goal is to expand the number of players within the system to 2,000 to 3,000 by 2030, he said.

“This can only be done by building our environment, doing all these things in parallel,” Veron said. One day, he hopes, Israel’s WBC roster could be filled with MLB players who grew up here and came through the Israeli system.

Jerusalem is the largest and fastest-growing baseball region in Israel, noted the city’s IAB regional director, Callie Mitchell, who planned on flying to Miami to cheer on Team Israel. Since she started at her position nearly two years ago, the program has grown from about 30 players to 75. The players, from age 4 through 18, are divided into about six age divisions and compete against teams across the country.

But though Israel’s capital features two American football fields, it lacks anything resembling a baseball field, or even a sandlot with a backstop. Instead, kids in the Jerusalem program train and sometimes play games on an Astroturf soccer field.

“We practice at Baka’s Geulim field, which is wonderful for our younger children, but we need something bigger for our older teams,” said Mitchell, who is Narron’s daughter. (He got connected to Team Israel after watching her kids play at Little League.) “The shape of a baseball diamond is just very different from soccer and football fields, so we’ll need our own space if we’re really going to grow.”

Girls are welcome to join, Mitchell stressed. “Parents are always asking for more girls,” she said. “We would love to have more girls join our team.”

Currently, nearly all of the players come from families of American immigrants. Not everyone is sure there is a market outside of that niche.

“Most Israelis are unaware that Israel even has a baseball program,” said Dan Rothem, the sports commentator. “They might be aware of the sport, but they don’t understand it or appreciate it. It feels boring to them, like nothing is happening.”

Most Israelis’ first and last encounter with baseball comes on a family trip to the United States, Rothem said.

“Maybe a friend took them to a Mets game in New York one time, and they were bored by the second inning, and totally disinterested by the fifth,” he said. “That’s the typical Israeli experience.”

But Veron views acceptance, and the WBC team, as part of a longer narrative arc.

“Even if we don’t win this time, the challenge is to use our story in a way that can help us move forward in the long term,” he said.

WBC success will not only grow baseball at home, but also deepen Israel’s resonance abroad, helping improve the country’s image on the international stage, according to the IAB chief. The team provides an invaluable vehicle for its fans to connect with the country, and many of the Jewish players who initially joined for the competitive opportunity have found passion and meaning in representing Israel, he said.

Beyond winning games, “the bigger question is, how do we get this group of people to really connect to their Jewish identity and heritage?” Veron said. “There’s a passion and excitement here.”

If Israel somehow finishes as one of the top two teams in its pool, it will advance to the knockout round and have a chance at the championship; oddsmakers give Israel a 1-in-65 to win the pool, and it’s an even longer shot to win the whole enchilada, with Team USA the heavy favorite.

If it finishes last in pool play, the team will be relegated and have to play its way back into the next tournament. That could set back a decade of steady progress for Israeli baseball on the world stage, and at home.

But whether or not Team Israel is outmatched during the tournament, Veron said, “we’re going to fight it out as underdogs, the Israeli way.”

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