By Reuven Hellman, Layout Editor
Eric Amkraut is the Assistant Athletic Director and Assistant Coach of the Yeshiva University baseball team. He has worked as a professional educator since 1990. Amkraut’s first job was with the Athletics Department at Rutgers University, and he has since been an educational administrator in various schools, ranging from public to international to parochial, since 2000. He has been involved with baseball, as a player and coach, since he was eight years old and played through college. While living in Israel for three years as an adult, Amkraut maintained his connection to the game, serving as a coach for the youth baseball team in Jerusalem and having a brief try-out with the start-up Israel Baseball League in 2007.
How do you balance being both a coach and the assistant athletic director?
Very simple. My primary responsibilities are in my role as Assistant Athletic Director or Alumni and Fundraising, but I also have direct oversight of our eight varsity men’s programs – which includes baseball. That will always take priority. My role as assistant coach with the baseball team is to work alongside the head coach in looking to best advance the overall program with a particular focus on game day operations. That often includes running pre-game infield-outfield warm up and coaching one of the bases during our at-bats.
What drew you to the YU Athletics Department?
Ever since leaving the Athletic Department at Rutgers University for work in both public and private educational administration, I have always dreamed of one day returning to the world of higher education and NCAA Athletics. That opportunity presented itself two years ago at YU, and I could not have been happier to have been welcomed to join Athletic Director Greg Fox’s staff.
How did you become involved in YU baseball?
Shortly after I was hired as assistant AD, it was evident we needed additional coaches on the baseball staff. My background as a player and a coach made it an obvious fit for both me and our program.
What differences have you noticed working here at YU compared to other places you’ve worked at?
When talking with recruits, we often highlight YU as being the most unique collegiate institution in the country. In my short time here, I can honestly say no truer statement can be made, about the university in general and about our athletic program specifically. Our commitment to Judaism and Torah values is evident in all aspects of the university, and athletics is no different.
Having now worked in both NCAA Division I and Division III programs, I can also honestly say there is something much purer to the experience of the intercollegiate athlete who competes at the Division III level. While all athletes at any level want to succeed (as Coach Herman Edwards once famously said, “You play to win the game.”), the demand to win at the Division I level is often so all-encompassing that Division I programs lose sight of what it means to be a student-athlete and not just an athlete who also happens to be a student. Division III programs, particularly ones like ours at Yeshiva, make athletics a part of the whole larger university experience, and that makes all the difference.
What are your hopes for the 2025 season as an assistant coach with consideration of this team’s past records?
Win one game. Then win another. Then win another and another and another… That is the short-term goal. The long term goal is to build a program that is not only competitive, but one that will one day be a destination for Jewish collegiate baseball players the way a number of our other sports programs are for Jewish high schoolers who play those sports.
If you could work with one baseball legend, fictional or real, who would it be and why?
When I was younger, I would have said Sandy Koufax (Jewish, Pitcher, Lefty – just like me) or Hank Greenberg, primarily because they were the two greatest players of Jewish heritage to have ever played the game. But today, I would say it would be Moe Berg. Berg understood that while being able to play baseball professionally was a great achievement, the ability to contribute to the greater good of Democracy – and as a by-product the rescue of European Jewry during World War II – as a spy for the OSS was a greater calling. And, can you imagine the stories he would have to share?
What’s something you want your students and athletes to know?
Take advantage of the opportunities before you as a collegiate student-athlete. Do not take the time to compete and represent your university for granted, because it goes by fast. Work hard. Study hard. Train hard. Play hard. Some days it may seem like you will be a student-athlete forever, but it is fleeting. So, engage to the fullest and one day you will fondly look back and remember these days to be some of the best times of your lives.
Photo Caption: Amkraut (standing) with the YU baseball team
Photo Credit: Eric Amkraut