page_title: Kevin Youkilis
section_title: Career highlights as a Jewish baseball player
hierarchical_section_title: Kevin Youkilis / Religion and community service / Career highlights as a Jewish baseball player
caption_attribution_description: English: Kevin Youkilis looks on as his base hit passes through the left side of the Baltimore Orioles infield.
context_page_description: Kevin Edmund Youkilis, nicknamed "Youk", is an American former professional baseball first baseman and third baseman, who primarily played for the Boston Red Sox. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, he was drafted by the Red Sox in 2001, after playing college baseball at the University of Cincinnati. He played in Major League Baseball for the Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox, and the New York Yankees. He is currently a special assistant to the Chicago Cubs and former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein.
  Known for his ability to get on base, while he was still a minor leaguer, Youkilis was nicknamed Euclis: The Greek God of Walks in the best-selling book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. A Gold Glove Award-winning first baseman, he once held baseball's record for most consecutive errorless games at first base. He is also a three-time MLB All-Star, two-time World Series Champion, and winner of the 2008 Hank Aaron Award.
  An intense performer on the playing field, Youkilis was known for his scrappiness, grittiness, dirt-stained jerseys, home-plate collisions, and his strange batting stance. He excelled despite a physique that led many observers to underestimate his athletic ability.
context_section_description: On August 8, 2005, while playing for the Red Sox, Youkilis took the field in the 9th inning along with Adam Stern and Gabe Kapler, setting a record for the most Jewish players on the field at one time in AL history, and the most in Major League Baseball history since four Jewish players took the field for the New York Giants in a game in 1941.
  Youkilis was featured in the 2008 Hank Greenberg 75th Anniversary edition of Jewish Major Leaguers Baseball Cards, published in affiliation with Fleer Trading Cards and the American Jewish Historical Society, commemorating the Jewish Major Leaguers from 1871 through 2008. He joined, among other Jewish major leaguers, Ryan Braun, Brad Ausmus, Ian Kinsler, Brian Horwitz, Gabe Kapler, Jason Marquis, Jason Hirsh, John Grabow, Craig Breslow, and Scott Schoeneweis.
  He was one of three Jewish players in the 2008 All-Star Game, joining Braun and Kinsler, and one of three Jewish players on the Team USA 2009 World Baseball Classic team, joining Braun and Grabow. Kinsler says that "Youkilis always says something to me on the bases. 'Happy Passover,' he'll throw something at me."
  Youkilis was named the Jewish MVP for 2008, beating out fellow All-Stars Braun and Kinsler. He was voted the top Jewish baseball player of the decade 2000–09 in online balloting, beating out Shawn Green and Braun. Through the 2018 season, his .382 on base percentage placed him 5th on the career all-time list of Jewish major leaguers (directly behind Al Rosen), his .478 slugging percentage placed him 6th (behind Shawn Green), his 254 doubles and 618 career RBIs placed him 7th (behind Mike Lieberthal for doubles, and behind Al Rosen for RBIs), his 150 home runs tied him for 7th with Lieberthal (behind Al Rosen), and his 539 walks placed him 8th behind Ryan Braun.
  
  In Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, a 2010 documentary film narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Youkilis noted: 
  It's something that I probably won’t realize until my career is over, how many people are really rooting for me and cheering for me. And it's not just because I went 3-for-4, or had a great game. It's just the fact that I represent a lot of Jewish people and a lot of the Jewish heritage, and the struggles that a lot of our people have had.
  He expressed interest in playing for Israel at the 2013 World Baseball Classic, if healthy. Since the 2013 qualifier was during the regular season, he was unable to compete, but he announced that he would play for the team if they made it past the qualifying round.
  In an embarrassing formatting oddity, it was noticed in 2007 that multiple baseball websites such as Baseball-Reference.com and Baseball Prospectus had been using "youkike" as part of their urls for webpages featuring Youkilis.  This unintended quirk affected those sites that used an automatic url-creating algorithm which combined the first five letters of a player's surname with the first two letters of his first name.  Following the discovery, the sites manually adjusted the urls to remove the inadvertent ethnic slur.
  At one point, the University of Cincinnati expressed interest in renaming its Marge Schott Stadium to "Kevin Youkilis Field at Marge Schott Stadium," after Youkilis. However, Youkilis, sensitized by the fact that he is Jewish, declined to be associated with late Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, who was known for her racist and anti-Semitic statements. Youkilis recalled his father saying to him: "Kevin that is a tremendous honor that they would think of doing this. The only problem is that our family name will never coexist with that other individual. I will never let our family name be next to someone that was filled with such hatred of our Jewish community." In 2020, Bearcats pitcher Nathan Moore along with Youkilis called for the university to remove Schott's name from the stadium. In June of that year the university's board of trustees voted unanimously to remove Schott's name from the stadium, effective immediately.
caption: Youkilis watches a base hit through the left side of the Baltimore Orioles infield
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