Sports writer Howard Megdal is totally fascinated with Jewish baseball players of yore and has put together what his publisher describes as “the definitive position-by-position ranking of baseball’s chosen players.”

In “The Baseball Talmud” from Collins of HarperCollins Publishers due out March 31, he talks of which players refused to play on Yom Kippur and which player chose baseball greatness over becoming a rabbi.

Megdal is 29 and lives in Airmont. This is his first book, but he writes for the New York Observer, ESPN, Mets Inside Pitch and other outlets, and he is clearly well-versed in baseball.

He was raised in Cherry Hill, N.J. and certainly seems to understand the Jewish psyche. He totally gets it that baseball is a major passion for many Jews but only some have the demonstrated talent to excel at playing the game. He has his own blog, where he offers other details and perspectives.

Megdal attended Bard College, and studied literature while creating the Bard Sports Radio Network, which consisted of him broadcasting for a 1-19 basketball team every year on a 10-watt station.

In the introduction, he says he got the idea for the book while at the batting cages with his college softball team and the topic of two baseball greats, Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, came up.

As a baseball fan myself (and from a Jewish family), I was intrigued with the book and Megdal’s serious, yet humorous, take on baseball history.

Here is a question-and-answer interview we did through email.

Question: What made you write on this topic?

Answer: My professor was so passionate about the topic — so was my close friend. Since I already obsessed about the topic, that gave me the impression that there were interesting stories to be told— and people were ready to hear them.

Q: I see you have organized this book by fielding positions. Why does this work for the topic so well?

A: I think it allows me direct comparison between players— to have shortstops compared to left-handed relievers isn’t so easy. But of course, the advanced defensive metrics allow for comparison among the very best players- since they’ve all had extensive careers.

Q: Who are some of your top favorite Jewish players?

A: I love the best ones, of course — grew up with the Hank Greenberg autobiography, and I think I saw Aviva Kempner’s film bio of Greenberg five times in the theaters. But, I also love the stories I discovered in the course of working on the book: Alta Cohen, whose father was a rabbi, playing minor league ball all over the country. I love the nicknames: The Rabbi of Swat, for Mose Solomon, and The Yiddish Curver, for Barney Pelty. Just finding out that half of the Brooklyn Dodger season ticket holders were Jewish, according to The Sporting News was fun. I had more great stories than I could fit into the book.

Q: Did you get something like this for your Bar Mitzvah or Hanukkah?

A: Yes and no. When I was 7, I got the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, and I became a fan, of course. I set out to write just such a book for Jewish players, both for the statistical comparisons, along with the anecdotes and humor.

Q: What books might come next?

A: Too many to recount. Another baseball book? Basketball? A political biography? A work of fiction? It will be fun to decide.