Tal Erel


Tal Erel is an Israel National Baseball Team baseball player.

Early life

He was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, and lived for a time in Miami, Florida, and Givatayim, Israel. Erel served in the Israel Defense Forces from 2014–17.

Baseball career

In 2016 Erel played for the Tempo Titans Prague in the Czech Republic 1st League, and in 2017 for the UVV Utrecht in the Netherlands 1st League. In 2017-18 he attended Miami Dade College. He then played baseball for the Palm Beach State College Panthers as a switch-hitting catcher, as he studied Business Administration.
Starting in September 2019 he was a sophomore at Lynn University, and played baseball for the university's Fighting Knights. If he plays on Team Israel in the 2020 Olympics he will be the second student-athlete in the university's history to compete in the Olympics, joining Melissa Ortiz who represented Colombia women's soccer in 2012 and 2016.

Team Israel

Erel has been a member of the Israel national baseball team since 2011. He served as the bullpen catcher for the Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic. He appeared in three games as catcher as the team played in the 2019 European Baseball Championship - B-Pool in early July 2019 in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, winning all of its games and advancing to the playoffs against Team Lithuania in the 2019 Playoff Series at the end of July 2019 for the last qualifying spot for the 2019 European Baseball Championship.
He played for Team Israel at the 2019 European Baseball Championship, batting.300 in ten at bats. Erel also played for the team at the Africa/Europe 2020 Olympic Qualification tournament in Italy in September 2019, which Israel won to qualify to play baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.