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,”



cmannphoto / gettyimages
“Last year was a cool moment,” he said.

Stubbs, like many Jews, is aware of the tribe’s long
history of success in the national pastime.

Bregman is an All-Star and Silver Slugger Award
winner as the best hitter at his position. Fried is
one of the better pitchers in the league, with a 43-20
career record and a 3.32 career earned run average.

Former Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun, who
played from 2007-2020, was a six-time All-Star and the
National League’s Most Valuable Player in 2011. Two
other Jewish players from Braun’s era, Ian Kinsler and
Kevin Youkilis, were multiple-time All-Stars.

And one day, Braun might join Los Angeles
Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax and Detroit Tigers
slugger Hank Greenberg in the National Baseball
Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New
York. “We’ve had some very strong representation
throughout the years,” said Jed Margolis, the chair-
man of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

“The list is really continued.”
Margolis called the history a source of pride for
Jews. He follows the Jewish players closely and
believes they help buck the stereotype that Jews are
not athletes.

“It helps overcome that antisemitism,” he said.

Stubbs feels that same sense of pride from Jewish
fans in Philadelphia.

The catcher came to Philadelphia in the offseason
through a trade for a minor leaguer; the Phillies
needed a backup for All-Star starter J.T. Realmuto.

Over more than a month of play and 35 games, the
28-year-old has only played in eight.

And on a team with big names like Bryce Harper,
Rhys Hoskins and Kyle Schwarber, among others,
Stubbs is not one of the more noticeable players at
the ballpark or on television. Yet in a city with one of
the biggest Jewish populations in the country, Jewish
fans never seem to fail to notice him, he says.

When he’s on the field, people will yell out his name
from the stands. This happens to players a lot, Stubbs
explains, but a lot of times when Jewish fans do it, they
will tell him they’re Jewish, and he’ll turn around.

“Every once in a while they’ll say, ‘Garrett, Garrett,
Garrett! I’m part of the Jewish community, too!’” he
said. “It’s cool. It’s great.”
So far, with his Jewish fans at his back, the catcher
is having a pretty nice season. In 22 plate appear-
ances, he is hitting a solid .350 with a .409 on-base
percentage. He also has no errors behind the plate.

Right now, Stubbs is just happy to be here. He said
he enjoys learning his position from Realmuto, who
he calls “the best catcher in the big leagues.”
The 28-year-old is catching bullpens each day and
taking cuts in the cage, trying to stay ready for when
the team needs him. He also believes that the Phillies,
who are hovering around the .500 mark, are talented
enough to turn their season around.

“We just haven’t really clicked as a team,” he said.

“We have a lot of really good players.” JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com cmannphoto / gettyimages
he said. “There is just a sense of community.”
At the moment, though, Stubbs does not practice
much. A peripatetic baseball journey has a way of
forcing you to focus on almost nothing else.

Stubbs was a standout high school player in
Southern California and then a college player at
the University of Southern California, winning the
Johnny Bench Award as the nation’s best catcher after
his senior season. He got drafted in the eighth round
by the Astros and began the obscure minor league
journey that kills many a big league dream.

But the catcher stuck it out through stints in Lancaster,
California; Corpus Christi, Texas; and other minor
league towns. Finally, in 2019, he reached the majors —
only to spend the next three seasons bouncing back and
forth between the Astros and the farm system.

In 2021, though, with Houston short a catcher due
to COVID, he came back up for game four of the
World Series against the Atlanta Braves and got to
play. Stubbs’ appearance helped make the ’21 series
the most Jewish in history, with Astros’ third base-
man Alex Bregman, Atlanta pitcher Max Fried and
Braves’ outfielder Joc Pederson all representing the
tribe. Atlanta beat Houston four games to two as Fried
pitched six scoreless innings in game six to earn the
win. Bregman and Pederson both struggled in the
series, hitting under .100, while Stubbs did not get a
chance to bat.

The catcher was well aware of the Jewish history he
was a part of during the series.

Young Garrett Stubbs catches in Little League.  Courtesy of Marti Jo Stubbs
Garrett Stubbs’ bar mitzvah photo
 Courtesy of Marti Jo Stubbs
Garrett Stubbs is the Phillies’ backup catcher to
J.T. Realmuto.  Courtesy of The Phillies/Miles Kennedy
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 17