Ike Davis

Isaac Benjamin "Ike" Davis is an American professional baseball first baseman for the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB). From 2010 through 2014, he played in MLB for the New York Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Davis is the ninth player in Mets history to hit three home runs in a single game. He and his father Ron Davis, who pitched in the majors for 11 years, are the 197th father-son combination to have both played in the major leagues.

Davis was drafted 18th overall in the first round of the 2008 MLB Draft. In the minor leagues, he batted .288 with a .371 on-base percentage (OBP), and a .467 slugging percentage, and was the Mets 2009 Organizational Player of the Year.

The Mets called him up to the majors in April 2010. His 11 home runs prior to the All-Star break that season tied him for the second-most ever by a Mets rookie. He set the Mets rookie record for total bases (230), and tied the Mets rookie records for bases on balls (72) and extra-base hits (53). He was named the first baseman on Baseball America‍ '​s 2010 All-Rookie Team. During a 2011 season shortened by an ankle injury, Davis batted .302. In 2012 he batted .227, but his 32 home runs were 5th-best in the National League. In 2013, he split his time between the Mets and AAA Las Vegas. He was traded to the Pirates in April 2014, and traded to the Athletics after the season.

Davis is Jewish. His mother, the youngest daughter of Bernard and Harriet Gollinger, is Jewish, and his father is Baptist. Davis embraces both sides of his family’s history. His mother's family was from Lithuania, and a significant portion of it was murdered in The Holocaust.

His great aunt on his mother’s side was a Holocaust survivor, and Davis said: "She was the one who knew everything that happened. She was able to come to the United States, and she brought the story with her." Davis' grandfather on his father’s side was a paratrooper in the United States Army who landed in France on D-Day in 1944, and later helped liberate one of the Nazi concentration camps.

Following Jewish custom, Davis' first name is actually Isaac (he was named after one of his mother's grandfathers), and his middle name is Benjamin (after her other grandfather). Although Davis does not practice Judaism and is non-religious, he stated: "I am really proud of my Jewish heritage" and describes himself as "culturally Jewish." He reflected: "It's funny about Judaism; It doesn’t matter if you're ultra-religious or not, as long as you know that it's in you or you're a part of it, everyone accepts you." His favorite greeting to people coming into and leaving the Mets clubhouse is "shalom" – the Hebrew word for both hello and goodbye – which he uses to celebrate the fact that he is Jewish. Davis states: "I'm glad Jewish kids get to see they can grow up to be professional baseball players."

Sources: Wikipedia