Title/Author:
“The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of
Baseball and the White House” by Curt Smith
Tags:
Baseball, professional,
history, politics
Publish date:
June 1, 2018
Length:
496 pages
Rating:
5 of 5 stars
(outstanding)
Review:
Two of the most
American of institutions are the Presidency and the game of baseball. They have
been intertwined together for over a century – from Abraham Lincoln playing “town
ball” to Barack Obama writing “Go Sox!” in the visitor book at the Baseball
Hall of Fame, there are many stories of what the game has meant to Presidents. They
are captured in this wonderful book by Curt Smith, a former speechwriter for George
H.W. Bush.
Every story that has
been passed down through the generations is shared here. The book may disprove
a myth such as William Howard Taft inventing the seventh inning stretch, which
did not happen. It may explain in more detail about well-known events as Commissioner
Landis did offer to suspend baseball before Franklin Roosevelt wrote the “Green
Light Letter”. Or, the reader may learn a new fact like this: Calvin Coolidge
was not the baseball person in his family as that was his wife Grace who was
the scorekeeper at the University of Vermont and kept a perfect scorecard at
each game she and her husband attended. Even
bigger surprises may be found in the book, such as learning that Donald Trump
was actually a good ballplayer.
One other interesting
fact is that the first President to attend a baseball game at any level was
Andrew Johnson. Also in the nineteenth
century, Benjamin Harrison became the first President to attend a professional
baseball game. Once the calendar turns
to the 20th century, Smith covers each president from Theodore
Roosevelt to Donald Trump by describing not only that man’s connection to
baseball, but also a little bit about each man’s term in office and the
accomplishments.
The book stays politically neutral with two notable exceptions. One is that Smith has much respect for his former boss as he looked fondly back at George H.W.Bush. The best baseball story for him is a “summit” he called in 1991 with Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio to honor the 50th anniversary of their achievements of 1941 – Williams hitting .406 and DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak. Why this was called a “summit” is that after the speeches in the Rose Garden, the President and his two guests flew to Toronto in Air Force One to meet Canadian Prime Minister before that year’s All-Star game.
The one area where
there is really no neutrality is that Smith felt that when Washington D.C. lost
its major league team (twice) Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon did not do enough
to stop the teams from leaving. They
were the men in the White House when the first team left after the 1960 season
for Minnesota and the second team, an expansion team awarded to Washington to
ease the pain, left after the 1971 season.
This is just a very
small sample of the many stories connecting baseball and the presidency. Even Presidents whose reputation for sport lies
elsewhere, such at Theodore Roosevelt and Gerald Ford in football, the reader
will lean how each president has a baseball connection. This book is rich with so many stories, it is
one that is very hard to put down. Baseball
fans, history buffs and political junkies will all love this book.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Book Format Read:
E-book (Kindle)
Buying Links:
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