feature story
Courtesy of The Phillies/Miles Kennedy
Phillies Catcher Refl ects
on Bar Mitzvah’s Role
in Career, Life
Garrett Stubbs joined the Phillies before the 2022 season.

JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
B aseball is a game that requires a level of
discipline almost beyond a normal human’s
capacity. Day aft er day, year aft er year, even decade aft er
decade, players rip swings in the cage, take balls in
the fi eld and play in yet another game in which they
will fail to help their team score more oft en than not.

Garrett Stubbs, the new catcher for the Philadelphia
Phillies, was draft ed by the Houston Astros in 2015,
reached the majors by 2019 and caught in the World
Series last fall.

Stubbs has achieved a level of discipline that is
almost beyond a normal human’s capacity.

And it was his bar mitzvah that taught him how to
reach that level, he says.

“Working towards a goal at a young age in something
other than sports or grades in school,” Stubbs explained.

Born in San Diego to a Jewish mother and a
Catholic father, Stubbs, 28, was raised Jewish. He
went to Hebrew school every Wednesday from age
16 MAY 19, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
eight to 13. He celebrated his bar mitzvah at Temple
Solel in Southern California with “a pretty big party,”
as he remembered it.

And even aft er his bar mitzvah, Stubbs and his
younger brother C.J. continued to attend services on
High Holidays with their mother, Marti Jo Stubbs.

Th eir father, T. Pat Stubbs, made the joint decision
with his wife to raise the children Jewish.

Marti Jo Stubbs was not religious beyond High
Holiday services and holiday meals, she explained.

But it was important to her to raise her kids that way.

“Th e fact that the Jewish population is a minority.

Trying to keep that alive,” she said. “Th e tradition,
the culture.”
When the husband and wife were married, a rabbi
offi ciated. He told T. Pat Stubbs that he wanted him
to be a friend of the Jewish people.

“We kind of started with that foundation,” Marti
Jo Stubbs said.

And later on, it shaped their oldest son. During his
bar mitzvah process, he was, as you might expect for
a future big leaguer, an active travel baseball player.

Each Sunday, he would go to religious school in the
morning in uniform, then go straight to his game. If
he had an earlier game, he would hustle back for a
later session of Hebrew school.

Early in life, the Jewish baseball standout learned
what it took to work toward goals, handle a busy
schedule and manage diff erent, but equally import-
ant, priorities. You could even say the process made
him a man.

At his Hawaiian-themed bar mitzvah party, before
most of his friends, Stubbs’ parents spoke about how
proud they were of their oldest son.

“Just that discipline of doing something every
single week and then getting to accomplish that was
defi nitely a stepping stone,” Stubbs said.

Stubbs did not have a lot of Jewish friends growing
up, and his Christian friends only really practiced on
Easter and Christmas, he said. So in preparing for his
big day, he was on his own.

Yet in hindsight, Stubbs appreciates it. Th e 28-year-
old is not married and does not have kids. But if he
builds a family of his own one day, he wants to emulate
his mother and pass down Judaism to his children.

“Th at’s important to me. I like the Jewish religion,”