Harrison Bader, a Jewish outfielder who grew up in Bronxville, New York, is departing the New York Mets after one year with the team.
Bader, a free agent, has signed a one-year, $6.25 million contract with the Minnesota Twins.
Just last January, the 30-year-old New Yorker signed a one-year, $10.5 million contract with the Mets, becoming the team’s first Jewish player since Kevin Pillar and Robert Stock donned the blue and orange in 2021, as the New York Jewish Week reported at the time.
Bader is the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother. His father, Louis, told the Forward in 2023 that his son is considering formally converting to Judaism. Bader had initially planned to play for Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic that year but ultimately dropped out due to injury.
Also in 2023, Bader was featured on an episode of celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s “Home Plate: New York” series. The pair paid a visit to Liebman’s Deli, the last Jewish deli in the Bronx, where they dined on matzah ball soup and pastrami sandwiches as they talked about baseball and growing up in New York.
Bader spent the first five and a half seasons of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, where he won a Gold Glove in 2021, the award given to the best defender at each position. He was traded to the New York Yankees in 2022, where he briefly became a postseason hero. Despite his skills in the outfield, the Yankees cut him late in the 2023 season. Bader played 14 games with the Cincinnati Reds before becoming a free agent last winter.
As a center fielder with the New York Mets last season, Bader was known to wear a blue belt emblazoned with his number, 44, and a white Star of David. He also showed up to spring training wearing a dog-tag necklace for the hostages in Gaza. He hit for a low .236 average, with 19 doubles, 12 home runs, 51 runs batted in and 17 stolen bases.
Jewish Mets fans reeling from Bader’s departure were likely comforted by the subsequent news that free agent Pete Alonso, a four-time All-Star who’s been a Met since his debut in 2019, re-signed on a two-year, $54 million contract.
Minnesota’s Twin Cities aren’t exactly New York, but fortunately the area is known for some standout Jewish delis, including Cecil’s Deli in St. Paul, where 80-something “deli matriarch” Sheila Glickman Leventhal has been working for more than 75 years. Here’s hoping Bader will film something there soon.
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