Um, what?

Is this seriously a debate -- whether a relatively successful baseball reliever of sixty years ago, who pitched for a team no longer in New York, most famously against another team no longer in greater New York, was Jewish enough?

Thanks New York Times for your granting of column inches (and it's a long column) to the wisdom of Alan Dershowitz on the matter:

Dershowitz, in fact, theorized that Branca, to his eyes as a boy, did not pitch “Jewishly.”

What the fuck does that even mean? Is Mel Brooks supposed to write some awful sketch about this?

And it is accompanied by further commentary from the usual cast of 'who gives a shit what they think?' self-important history bores, like Doris (don't forget the Kearns) Goodwin and, oh for fuck's sake!, William Donohue.

Is this a transcript from the worst outtake in Ken Burn's 'Baseball'?