Just beyond the left-field fence at Coveleski Stadium, home to the South Bend Silver Hawks, a synagogue sat unused for years. If visitors to the minor-league ballpark noticed the red-brick building they probably mistook it for an old garage, or for one of downtown South Bend’s abandoned factories. When Andrew Berlin purchased the Silver Hawks, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Class A affiliate, in 2011, he overlooked the little old synagogue, too. He was taking control of a minor-league baseball team that hadn’t won a title since 2005. Attendance was low and profit margins shaky. He had enough to worry about.

But as he went to work making improvements on Coveleski Stadium, Berlin, who is Jewish, wondered about the dilapidated building visible from almost every seat in the park. Was there something that could be done with it?

When he inspected the synagogue for the first time, Berlin, who lives in suburban Chicago and runs a packaging company, was moved by what he saw. Sunlight glanced in through tall, arched windows. An enormous brass chandelier, darkened by age and inattention, hung from the middle of the ceiling. Along the eastern wall, he saw an ornate wooden bimah. The place hadn’t been used in years, but it hadn’t been vandalized, either, and it was easy to imagine what it had looked like when it had functioned as a shul. “It’s a beautiful building,” Berlin told me recently. Even in its derelict state, “there was something special about the place.”

Built in 1901, the Sons of Israel synagogue was once part of a small but vibrant Orthodox Jewish community in downtown South Bend. But after South Bend’s largest employer, Studebaker, closed its automobile factory, in 1963, many middle-class families left the city, including members of the Sons of Israel congregation.

Next door to the synagogue, construction on the stadium began in 1986, after South Bend was awarded a Midwest League expansion team; the South Bend White Sox, named for their original affiliate, began playing in 1988. (In 1994, the team was renamed for the Studebaker Silver Hawk.)

The stadium was supposed to reinvigorate the struggling downtown, but people continued to move away. Sons of Israel stopped holding services in 1990, and by the end of the twentieth century only two congregants remained. In 2001, one of those members removed the Jewish stars from the turrets, locked the doors, and walked away. A non-profit purchased the building and made some improvements, but no one was able to find a use for the building, and it eventually became the property of the city of South Bend.

When Berlin bought the team, he held a meeting with members of the Jewish community and proposed moving the perimeter of the stadium to enclose the synagogue. The team needed a new gift shop, and it seemed a shame to waste such a beautiful old building. He had already pledged to spend $2.5 million of his own money on ballpark improvements. Now, he said, he would spend an additional million dollars on the synagogue’s restoration. The city of South Bend transferred ownership to Berlin.

“It wasn’t exactly what we had hoped for,” said David Piser, president of the Michiana Jewish Historical Society and one of the last Sons of Israel congregants. A Jewish museum would have been preferable, but Piser feared that the building might be knocked down if no use for it was found. Ultimately, everyone agreed that a gift-shop synagogue was better than no synagogue at all.

At one point in the discussions, Berlin proposed painting a target on the synagogue’s roof to encourage Silver Hawks batters to hit home runs. The idea was not received warmly by Piser or by some of the other Jewish community leaders. Today, the roof of the building is covered with an ad for Toyota.

The gift shop opened on May 25, 2012, and Piser became a fan. When the synagogue’s ornate chandelier was restored and lit in a well-attended ceremony five weeks later, Piser was there to celebrate.

There are now cash registers where the bimah once stood, and tables stacked with T-shirts where congregants sat and read from their prayer books. The ark that once held the torah is gone. In its place is a painting, commissioned by Berlin, of animals being loaded onto Noah’s ark. Its title is “Rain Delay.” Another new painting was inspired by the Sistine Chapel: it shows God handing a baseball to Adam, along with the words “Play Ball.”

The rest of the stadium is undergoing changes, too. The stadium was originally named for former big leaguer Stanley Coveleski, but Berlin recently sold the naming rights to an Indian tribe that operates a casino and resort nearby. Now it’s called Four Winds Field at Coveleski Stadium. Meanwhile, the gift shop is doing a robust business. Despite the art, the ornate chandelier, and the stained-glass windows, most Silver Hawks fans don’t seem to notice that they’re in a former house of worship. They dig through the T-shirts and try on foam fingers just as they would in any other shop. Berlin is beginning to promote the space in new ways, too. He wants to book weddings and bar mitzvahs in the off-season.

On May 16th, the Silver Hawks will unveil a new plaque near the entrance to the gift shop, calling more attention to the synagogue’s heritage, including its recent addition to the National Register of Historic Places. The team, which reached the league’s championship series last year, and has started strongly this season with twenty wins and seventeen losses, will be playing the Fort Wayne TinCaps that night. Berlin hopes that fans will come for the ceremony and stay for the baseball, the free Gallo wine tasting, and the post-game fireworks. That day also happens to be a Friday, which means that if Jewish fans would like to visit the gift shop at sundown to offer their private Sabbath prayers, they’re welcome to do so.

Photograph: Benjamin Hill.