Johnny Kling

Believe it or not, we actually do research for JONJ. Yes, that neat verdict you see below is often a result of long elaborate queries to figure out exactly how Jewish someone is.

There is no research to be done here. Johnny Kling's Jewishness is a mystery that is unlikely to be ever solved.

The long-cursed Chicago Cubs actually won two straight World Series, in 1907 and 1908, and Kling was a starting catcher on those teams. He even made it to the Hall of Fame ballot, topping out at 10%. So some consider Kling to be "the first great Jewish baseball player". (Stretching the definition of "great", but we'll let it be.) The problem is: nobody knows if he was actually Jewish!

Many contemporary accounts considered him Jewish. (Some believe his original name was Kline, which is not necessarily Jewish, but is more Jewish than Kling.) There is a half-century worth of newspaper articles that confirm as such. But here is one major problem: his wife categorically denied that he was.

According to Mrs. Kling, Johnny was baptized as a Baptist... or was it a Lutheran? Her own accounts diverge enough to the point that some believe that she made up the ruse to save her husband from antisemitism. Oh, and she was Jewish herself.

So what about ancestral records? Researchers have tried for years, and cannot figure out the truth. So what is our little Jewy website gonna do in a situation like this?

Well, that's why we have the neat(?) verdict below...