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Lou Brissie isn't Jewish, but when Ira Berkow spoke about the pitcher who overcame a shattered leg in World War II on Sunday in Bridgewater, Berkow told a Jewish story.

As part of the yearlong Festival of Books and Culture at the Shimon and Sara Birnbaum Jewish Community Center, Berkow, a Jewish Pulitzer Prize-winning sports reporter and columnist who spent 26 years at the New York Times, discussed and signed copies of his recent book, "The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie."

Berkow recounted how Brissie's left leg shattered in 30 different places as mortar shells and fragments found their way into almost every part of his body during a 1944 battle in Northern Italy. Yet Brissie achieved his dream of reaching Major League Baseball, leg brace and all, and throughout a seven-year career showed the type of determination exemplified by the Jewish people generation after generation, Berkow said.

"He not only survived under great adversity, he thrived," Berkow told The Jewish State. "What better metaphor can you have for Jews? In a lot of ways, it's a Jewish story."

A more explicitly Jewish story, however, will be told in an upcoming documentary Berkow wrote called "Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story." Berkow showed the JCC audience an eight-minute trailer for the film, which he said Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has already agreed to air next fall.

Jewish baseball legends like Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax showed America that Jews can excel from a physical standpoint, not just with their stereotypical business expertise, said Berkow, who wrote "Hank Greenberg: Hall-of-Fame Slugger" and collaborated with Greenberg on "Hank Greenberg: The Story of My Life." Additionally, Greenberg and Koufax's decisions to sit out games on Yom Kippur "brought a resonance to Jewish people -- and pride," he said.

Berkow acknowledged that while he worked on the book about Brissie, he was simply building off an inspirational story and didn't consciously write a Jewish story. As far as overcoming adversity is concerned, Brissie's accomplishments are right up there with those of Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier as the sport's first black major leaguer, Berkow told the crowd at the JCC.

Born in South Carolina in 1924, Brissie was introduced to adversity at an early age when his father, a daredevil bike rider, was beaten by the Ku Klux Klan for opening up a bike shop with a black partner, Berkow said. By age 14, Brissie was throwing upwards of 90 miles per hour as a star pitcher in semipro baseball leagues, and a few years later attracted the attention of Connie Mack, legendary manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.

While Mack said he thought Brissie had a major league future, he insisted on sending Brissie to college first because "the smarter pitchers are, the better pitchers are," Berkow said.

Instead, Brissie followed the path of two of his cousins and went to fight in World War II. He was a corporal leading a convoy of 12 men, Berkow said, when Germans who were hiding behind trees ambushed the unit and killed them all -- except Brissie.

When the American graves registration unit arrived on the battlefield in Italy, one soldier said of Brissie's body that "I think this one is breathing," Berkow said. When Brissie regained consciousness, he was greeted by a surgeon who said his leg would have to be amputated.

But Brissie insisted that amputating his leg would end his hopes of playing baseball again, and he even showed the surgeon a letter from Connie Mack about how Mack looked forward to his return. Thus, the surgeon reconstructed Brissie's leg, and he was also the first soldier to receive penicillin, Berkow said.

When the doctor went on to write about treating Brissie, he recounted that "It wasn't just the surgery, and it wasn't just the penicillin. It was Lou Brissie's will to overcome his disability."

Unable to walk for a year, Brissie resumed the pursuit of his dream in the minor leagues in 1947, outsmarting hitters who tried to bunt against him because of his leg, and started the final game of that season for the A's in the majors, at Yankee Stadium.

The next season, Brissie started on opening day and created memories like one matchup with Hall of Fame slugger Ted Williams, during which Williams hit a line drive into Brissie's leg brace and ran to help Brissie after he collapsed, only to hear the pitcher respond "Why don't you learn how to pull the damn ball," Berkow said.

Brissie finished fourth in the American League in strikeouts that season and followed with 16 wins in 1949, before he began to wear down and was traded to the Cleveland Indians in 1951. When Brissie's manager in 1953 -- ironically, Hank Greenberg -- wanted to send him down to the minors, Brissie said such a move would mean failure in the eyes of everyone who drew inspiration from his career, including many followers who had disabilities, Berkow said. So instead of accepting the demotion, Brissie retired.

Today, Brissie is 85 years old and goes for treatments on his leg twice a week at a VA hospital, where he also talks with American soldiers from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan about the challenges of adjusting to life after war and injuries, Berkow said. The last chapter of Berkow's book describes one such meeting with six soldiers.

In the preview of Berkow's film, one rabbi spoke about how the Brooklyn Dodgers seemed Jewish to her because they exemplified values like social justice by accepting Jackie Robinson. Koufax takes viewers inside his desire for perfection by saying "your goals are to be as good as you can be, and you give up your goals very grudgingly." Hank Greenberg's son Stephen notes that with more recent stars like Shawn Green and Kevin Youkilis, we are in the midst of a renaissance for Jews in baseball.

The Jewish content found in much of Berkow's work, and his renowned career as a sportswriter, made him a perfect guest speaker in light of the JCC's goal of blending Jewish culture and sports, event organizer Stan Kopman said. Kopman agreed with Berkow that Brissie's life story teaches Jewish values.

"Though Brissie wasn't Jewish, it's still an inspirational story [Berkow] researched very well and put together in this book," Kopman said.