Now visiting the Western Wall as part of Migdal Ohr’s NBA Legends Goodwill Tour to Israel, from the University of Massachusetts, at 6′6, number 6, Dr. J, Julius Errrrrrrrrrrrrrving…

ESPN looks back at the almost-successful attempt to get the United States to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics:

Seventy-two years ago this summer, Hitler’s Germany played host to the Games of the Eleventh Olympiad in Berlin.

The games are now best remembered for the brilliance of Jesse Owens — who won four gold medals — and the success of the Nazis’ propaganda machine. For the first time in the history of the modern Olympics, the Games were held hostage by the political goals of the host nation.

What’s largely forgotten is the fact that a powerful American movement to boycott the Nazi Olympics nearly succeeded. The final vote of the AAU’s delegates was 58.25 to 55.75 in favor of participation. If three more delegates had voted to boycott the Games, the Nazis would have presided at a meaningless event.

From some place else in the world, JTA globe-trotting correspondent Michael J. Jordan noticed this fun, puzzling piece of news:

Indiana freshman guard Eric Gordon is leaving the Hoosiers for the NBA, according to a report from the Indianapolis Star.

The Big Ten’s leading scorer and conference freshman of the year will become the fifth of Indiana’s regular starters to leave the program, handing new coach Tom Crean a clean slate heading into his inaugural season with the Hoosiers.

Gordon will make the announcement at 4:30 p.m. Monday at the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis, the school said Friday.

The JCC!?! As Jordan put it: “What, the Marriott was booked?”

We’re on it. For now, here what a Google search turned up …

His mother says: “When he was very young, his dad would take him to the JCC and it was dribble, dribble, dribble.”

And this from a commenter to another article: “You questioned a kid’s heart, which by proxy means his effort, his drive, and his will. Not his ability. I’ve sat in the gym at the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis and watched him shoot 200 3-pointers while running sprints in between.”

No one can accuse the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians of getting complacent after squaring off last fall for the American League pennant. This season both teams are stepping up their game — with kosher hot dogs.

The Boston Herald has the scoop on Fenway Park’s new kosher dog machine:

The home of the Fenway Frank, which claims to sell more hot dogs than any other ballpark in the country, is adding a new option for Jewish fans who adhere to strict kosher dietary laws. A new automated “Hot Nosh” vending machine, to be located in the big concourse under the bleachers, will cook and dispense all-beef, glatt kosher hot dogs in under a minute.

Fenway is the first customer of Wayne Feder’s Hot Nosh Boston LLC. The Brookline company is the New England franchisee of Kosher Vending Industries, a New York supplier of glatt kosher, hot food vending machines.

This season, the Cleveland Jewish News reports, the food folks at what used to be known as Jacobs Field had their act together for opening day:

It took nearly half of last year’s baseball season for rabbinically supervised, strictly kosher hot dogs to be served at Indians games.

This year, Jewish baseball fans can enjoy kosher franks starting with the Tribe’s very first game. …

Ghazi Faddoul, a Lebanese Christian who runs the kosher Subway restaurant at The Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, started the stand last June with help from Clevelanders Earl Lefkovitz and Tom Sudow. The two men also assisted in launching the stadium’s very first kosher stand in 1998.

Israeli visual artist Dov Abramson take a Kabbalistic look at Opening Day of the baseball season in his new work, “Field of Life” (click to enlarge):

Jewschool’s Ben Dreyfus posits that Haftarat Zachor + Megillat Esther = The Lord of the Rings (and wonders which is totally plagiarized).

What, if anything, does it mean that the comic book industry was so heavily populated by Jews (and, while the Forward is on the topic, Mister E lights the menorah).

With the NCAA tournament underway, ESPN takes a look at Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl. Jewish federation leaders know him as Mordechai Shmuel.

Help wanted: Cute kid to be Jewish secret agent and a Jewish family willing to swap its mother.

Natalie Portman loses her Hasidic co-star.

With help from JTA digital master Daniel Sieradski and a big hat tip to Daniel Treiman.

With baseball writers buzzing this week about comedian Billy Crystal’s short stint with the New York Yankees, Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt picked a good time for a column on his own stab at spring training glory:

As spring training moves toward Opening Day, rekindling in baseball fans everywhere the flickering and foolish hope that this could be the year for their team, I share with you my own story of child-like dreams rubbing up against reality. It’s a saga I like to think of as My (Almost) Magical Inning.

In this case it was the Baltimore Orioles (who went on to win the World Series that fall). And while it’s true that it was a spring training exhibition game, not a “real” game, and

it took place in a rundown ballpark in Miami, not Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, and it was to be in a “B” squad game, not an “A” squad game, and it was only for a fraction of the game, not the whole game, still — to play on the field with your heroes, in uniform, who wouldn’t jump at this chance of a lifetime?

So when a well-placed friend arranged for this to happen (long before Baseball Fantasy Camps became a booming business for affluent, grown-up kids), I flew down to Miami from Baltimore, excited and nervous, and clutching my weather-beaten fielders glove. …

Courtesy of cracked.com…

Kevin Youkilis just hit a 2-run homer to put an exclamation point on the big Red Sox comeback. The dude hit close to .500 in the American League Championship Series.

That calls for another look at the first baseman’s greatest moment …