Jewish Heritage Night at Fenway Park began with one of the most emotional ceremonial first pitches in recent memory.<\/p>\n
On the mound before Monday night\u2019s series opener with the visiting New York Mets was Omer Shem Tov, who survived 505 days in captivity after being taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
Shem Tov walked onto the diamond wearing white sneakers with \u201cBRING THEM HOME NOW\u201d emblazoned on the side. On the front of his Red Sox jersey was a yellow ribbon to honor his fellow hostages, 58 of whom are still trapped in Gaza. Surrounding the pitcher\u2019s mound were Jewish members of the Red Sox front office. The standing ovation began before he was even in his windup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was amazing, amazing,\u201d Shem Tov told the Herald after. \u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity, and it\u2019s an honor for me to be here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shem Tov is the first former hostage to visit Massachusetts. He wasn\u2019t at Fenway because he loves the Red Sox, or even baseball, at all. He knew the sport, but didn\u2019t grow up watching or playing games, so to prepare, he practiced throwing in Israel. But even though he\u2019s never done anything like this before, he wasn\u2019t nervous.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the thing that I\u2019ve been through, there is really, I don\u2019t know, (a) small amount of things that can affect me, make me nervous,\u201d he said. \u201cI was excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shem Tov also met Alex Bregman<\/a>, the biggest Jewish star in baseball, before the game. Shem Tov was among the hostages taken from the Nova Music Festival. Bregman, a vocal supporter of Israel and advocate for the hostages, recently spent a Red Sox off-day in Toronto at the Nova Exhibition<\/a>, going on a tour with someone who survived Hamas\u2019 attack on Nova.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s representing us,\u201d Shem Tov said. \u201cAny Jew is family of mine, so it\u2019s cool, it\u2019s very cool to see him succeed like this, and I wish him the best, only the best.\u201d<\/p>\n On the mound, Shem Tov smiled and blew kisses to the crowd, radiating warmth and kindness. But of course, there\u2019s pain and heartache, too. He doesn\u2019t hide that.<\/p>\n \u201cOn one side, I\u2019m free,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m supposed to be the happiest man alive. And I am happy, I really am, because I\u2019m with my family, I\u2019m with my friends. But at the same time, there is my brothers and my sisters, the other hostages, the remaining hostages, they\u2019re still there. So it\u2019s difficult to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of guilt,\u201d Shem Tov continued. \u201cEvery time I take a sip of water, I know for them it\u2019s like heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n Shem Tov was kept in dark cells underground for long periods of his captivity, and was given so little food that he became emaciated. Only in the days before his release did his captors make sure to feed him, so he wouldn\u2019t look as starved as he had been.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been less than three months since Shem Tov finally came home. He has spent a significant amount of that time traveling the world. Nine days after his release, he flew to Washington D.C. to meet President Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a mission right now,\u201d Shem Tov said. \u201cMy mission is to bring all the remaining hostages back home. So I will do whatever it takes. I will be heard where it is. I will go and show myself with me wearing the ribbon. And I\u2019m trying to effect, I\u2019m trying to do something, I\u2019m trying to move things, so anything I can do, I will do it. Anywhere I can be, I will be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jewish Heritage Night at Fenway Park began with one of the most emotional ceremonial first pitches in recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2375],"tags":[5,141,48,2542,13565,4,169,89,2543,185,6984],"class_list":{"0":"post-40023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-bostonredsox","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-red-sox","16":"tag-redsox","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114537404201028797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}