Starting a new career is difficult enough, but doing it without the staples of one’s life? That may be asking too much.

“They have to have pastrami, corned beef and brisket,” Ron Blomberg said. “A guy I talked to said they don’t have it over there. He said bagels aren’t the same as in America. Does that mean I’m going to have to FedEx all my food from America? That’s the only way I’d eat.”

Blomberg, whose claim to fame besides eating is that he was the major leagues’ first designated hitter in 1973, was thinking ahead to his first job as manager of a baseball team. In June he will manage the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox in the inaugural season of the Israel Baseball League.

Blomberg, Art Shamsky and Ken Holtzman, all former major leaguers, will be unveiled today at a news conference in Manhattan as half of the managers in Israel’s first professional baseball league. The 45-game season is scheduled to open June 24.

“Look at who they’re bringing in,” Blomberg said. “They’re bringing in three Jews to be coaches. Is it going to work? I think it’s going to take time. In America, soccer isn’t a big deal other than high schools and colleges. I think this will be the same thing. They have soccer and basketball and now baseball.”

With a large American population in Israel, Blomberg will probably be a central figure among the league’s personnel. The town whose team he will manage has a particularly sizable population of former residents of New Jersey and New York, and many remember Blomberg as a popular member of mediocre Yankees teams in the early 1970s.

He has basically been out of baseball since 1978, but he has remained a familiar figure to many fans.

“I do a lot of Yankee fantasy camps and corporate speaking,” Blomberg said. “I still do a lot of bar mitzvahs and speaking for Jewish organizations.”

Blomberg, 58, said the number of speaking engagements had risen since the publication last year of his book, “Designated Hebrew.”

“I’m in the process now of writing a baseball cookbook,” he added.

That’s not surprising for a man who has always liked to eat. His feats in that regard were so prodigious that the Stage Deli in Manhattan recognized him in retirement last year by bringing back a sandwich named for him: the Ron Blomberg, a triple-decker combination of corned beef, pastrami and chopped liver, with a Bermuda onion.

“He’s one of our treasured customers,” said Barry Orenstein, the Stage manager. “He’s a friend of the store. Whenever he’s in New York, he frequents us. We had his book signing here last year. He loves matzo ball soup and the food here.”

Blomberg continues to like baseball, too, although he hasn’t had much contact with it.

“I do a little bit of scouting for the Yankees,” he said. “I do high school games and college games in Atlanta. I have been offered some baseball coaching jobs, but the only way I would go back into baseball is basically with the Yankees.”

Blomberg, who continues to have a mutual love affair with New York fans, has appeared at Yankees Old-Timers’ Days and recalled one game in particular.

“Four years ago I hit a home run off Mike Torrez into the upper deck,” he said. “I said that’s great. But I can’t do it anymore. Now I can’t see the ball. It’s blurry. Balls that come at 30 miles an hour look like 100. At a fantasy camp last November, I had a camper throw me a 30-mile-an-hour fastball and I struck out.”

Blomberg said that his knees and shoulders were bad, too, but that they wouldn’t interfere with his initial attempt at managing.

“I can coach, I can motivate people,” he said. “I still know the game of baseball. The game of baseball is scoring more runs than the other team. The game of baseball is pitching.”

Blomberg has never been to Israel. He recalled that when he was playing for the Yankees, he was invited to visit by Golda Meir, the prime minister, and Moshe Dayan, the defense minister.

“It’s a good way to go to Israel,” he said of his new job. “It’s a good way to see where the world started. When I was growing up, I planted trees in Israel for $1. I can go see the trees I planted.”

Blomberg referred to a program started years ago by the Jewish National Fund in which schoolchildren planted trees in Israel. Now Blomberg hopes to be a part of helping baseball grow in Israel.

A Lineup of Support

Commissioner Bud Selig, who with his wife, Sue, is a major contributor to Israeli institutions; Wendy Selig-Prieb, his daughter and the former chief executive of the Milwaukee Brewers; and Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees, are serving on the advisory board of the Israeli league.

Daniel Kurtzer, the former United States ambassador to Egypt and Israel, is the league’s commissioner, and Dan Duquette, the former general manager of the Montreal Expos and the Boston Red Sox, is the baseball operations director.

The six teams will be the Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, the Modi’in Miracle, the Tel Aviv Lightning, the Ra’anana Express, the Netanya Tigers and the Petach Tikva Pioneers.