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........

© The Times of Israel