PETAH TIKVA, Israel -- In this land that is holy for Jews, Muslims and Christians, Benjamin Engelhart is hoping to find believers in America's favorite pastime: baseball.
The 26-year-old switch-hitter from Silver Spring took to the field last month to play in Israel's first professional baseball league.
A bold new experiment to export hardball to the United States' closest Middle East ally, the Israel Baseball League is the latest evidence of the steady Americanization of the Jewish state.
But many here wonder whether the often slow-moving game with a complex, almost Talmudic set of rules will gain followers in a country raised on soccer and basketball. Most Israelis would likely have trouble finding first base, let alone know whether a ball is foul or fair.
"If it stays around it can catch on," says Engelhart, taking a break between innings last week as his Netanya Tigers took on the Ra'anana Express at the Baptist Village baseball field near Tel Aviv. "It's still trying to find its place."
That was clear on opening day. Befuddled announcers for the June 24 opener realized that the Hebrew language doesn't have a word for "home plate." The players appeared confused, too, committing plenty of errors and sloppy plays. After the second out of one inning, the Petah Tikva Pioneers suddenly walked off the field, allowing one of the Modi'in Miracle players to advance before they realized their mistake.
The league's inaugural season has also had its share of technical glitches. Night games at a kibbutz field were canceled because umpires determined the lighting was too dim. The league's main Tel Aviv stadium is still not ready for play for reasons that remain unclear, forcing games to be canceled and rescheduled. According to Israeli press reports, one team lost its batting helmets before a game and wore the opponents'.
After the first game drew a crowd of more than 3,000 people, attendance has dwindled to a few hundred and in some cases a few dozen.
And yet for many fans - most of them Americans living in Israel - just the sight of a freshly mowed baseball diamond, the sound of a fast ball arriving in a catcher's mitt and the fatty smell of hot dogs on the grill are enough to keep them coming.
"You feel a little bit of America," said Elchanan Kovalsky, a Chicago native who moved to Israel a quarter-century ago, as he sat behind home plate watching Engelhart's Netanya Tigers pummel the Ra'anana Express 7-3.
"Most Israelis don't understand this," Kovalsky continued, a Chicago Cubs cap shading his face from a blistering Mediterranean sun. "They don't know what's going on. It's like cricket for me. I've watched it for 20 years and I still don't know what's happening."
Given time, Israel might begin to understand why some Americans approach the sport with an almost religious devotion, he says.
"Israelis, they like anything to do with America. But maybe it has to be more festive. Maybe," he said, a grin stretching across his face as an idea came to mind, "if there were cheerleaders."
The Israel Baseball League is the dream of Larry Baras, a Boston-based baking entrepreneur who was raised in Silver Spring and educated at Talmudical Academy in Baltimore.
"I was looking for a project to do for Israel. I went to a minor league game and saw all the fun and all the wholesome entertainment. It seemed like that would be such a beautiful picture to bring over here. They could use that kind of innocence. A family, community, getaway, a relief from everyday stresses," he said.
The league has six teams - the Beit Shemesh Blue Sox, Modi'in Miracle, Netanya Tigers, Petah Tikva Pioneers, Ra'anana Express and Tel Aviv Lightning - each playing a 45-game season. A league championship game is scheduled for Aug. 19. Games are played according to Major League Baseball rules, with two main exceptions. They last for seven innings instead of nine and if a game is tied at the end of the seventh inning, it is decided by a home run derby.
There is also something uniquely Israeli about the experience. Play begins after the singing of "Hatikva," Israel's national anthem. There is a fifth-inning stretch. The hot dogs and hamburgers at the concession stands are kosher.
In the buildup to the season opener, the league released a long list of "possible" biblical references to baseball: "And Abner said to Joab, 'Let the young men ... arise and play before us'" - Samuel II 2:14; " ... and it was good ... " - Genesis 1:4; "and [it] ... was foul ... " - Exodus 7:21; "Let us go and sacrifice ... " - Exodus 5:8.
Of the 120 players, about 20 percent are Israeli, with the rest of the roster filled with amateur and minor league players from the U.S., Dominican Republic, Australia, Canada, Russia, Japan and Colombia.
Most players are here looking to make their childhood dreams last one season longer before settling into school or a job. They receive $2,000 for the season and share rooms in a high school dormitory near Tel Aviv.
"They do give us three meals a day and air conditioning in most of the rooms. Most guys are making it through and for the most part enjoying it," says Engelhart, a second-year physical therapy student at University of Maryland, Baltimore who put off an internship to play with the Netanya Tigers this summer.
"I was just looking for a place to play. My window of opportunity is closing," said Joshua Zumbrun, 25, a pitcher for the Ra'anana Express who was born and raised in Baltimore and played baseball for Loch Raven High School and the Air Force Academy.
Zumbrun's teammate, Guy Peled, 27, is one of the league's few Israeli players. The outfielder picked up his skills while living in Florida with his family for three years during grade school.
Despite taunts by his soccer- and basketball-playing friends, he continued with the sport when he returned to Israel, joining the country's largely ignored amateur league. Those games attract two or three fans, all of them relatives of the players, he says.
While the professional baseball league attendance is not that dismal, Peled worries that the game is too mysterious for the Israeli media and public.
Whatever the challenges, Baras remains committed to the league and is already promising a second season. He points to the diversity in the crowd, which is a mix of religious and secular, men and women, the elderly and children.
"You never see that at the professional sports games in Israel. So I think it's opening up doors to new fans, and I think it's creating a different environment because it's such a mixed crowd," he said.
Maybe. But Jay Friedman, 70, a New York City native and Yankees fan who moved to Israel 40 years ago, has his doubts about future seasons.
Friedman watched the game with an intensity of a true fan, carefully marking a scoring sheet after each inning. His 12-year-old grandson, born and raised in Israel, sat beside him, staring at the field with about as much interest as he might have in a summer school algebra class.
"He's more interested in my Diet Coke than baseball," Friedman laughed. "I don't think this experiment is going to succeed."