Israel's national baseball team took its first step towards qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo over the weekend, winning the Confederation of European Baseball's (CEB) European Championships Pool in a perfect 6-0 sweep.
Team Israel, which overcame the Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Irish and Russian teams to take first place in its group, will now advance later this month to a three-game playoff series against the winner of the second Pool B group: Lithuania.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
The winner of that series will move up to Pool A, and the top five teams from that group will advance to Olympics qualifiers in Parma, Italy, at the end of September. Though many of Israel's players were recruited from outside the country, seven began their baseball careers in Israel. Five are native-born Israelis.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org
