Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 55, originally released in print form in 2019. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. Š 2019 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
The Presidents and BASEBALL Presidential Openers and Other Traditions
6
white house history quarterly
P O R T R A I T : C O U R T E S Y M A R Y FA I R FA X K I R K P I C K L E
NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM
fred eric j. fro mmer
white house history quarterly
7
the pitcher’s mound, for most of the twentieth century they tossed the ball from the stands, over a scrum of photographers onto the field into a crowd of players from both teams, who would battle for it, with the winning player getting an autograph from the chief executive. When Taft made his opening-day pitch in 1910, baseball was the only team sport that mattered in the United States. Football has since eclipsed it as the nation’s most popular sport, but nothing matches baseball’s hold on American culture. A hundred years later, President Barack Obama marked the anniversary in 2010 with a high, wide toss at Nationals Park. Baseball’s relationship with the White House went back to even before
8
white house history quarterly
previous spread
President Harry S. Truman completes his throw to open the September 8, 1945, game between the Washington Senators and the St. Louis Browns, who were from Truman’s home state of Missouri. above
President William Howard Taft throws out the first ball to open a Washington Senators baseball game at Bennett Park in Detroit on June 9, 1910. In April that same year Taft threw the first pitch at the first home game of the Washington team. opposite
President Taft passes the Senators’ dugout ahead of the August 13, 1912, game. The sinking of the Titanic in April of that year had prevented Taft from making the first toss at the season opener. Almost a century later, President Barack Obama throws the opening pitch at Nationals Park.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
f o r m o r e t h a n a c e n t u r y , the relationship between presidents and the national pastime has been wound as tightly as a new baseball. Most fans are familiar with the ceremonial first pitch, which was a longtime Washington tradition, even with a thirty-three-year absence. But presidents have played other, more substantive roles, working behind the scenes to keep the sport going during wartime and even trying to find a new team for Washington, D.C. From William Howard Taft to Richard Nixon, every president made at least one opening-day toss in Washington, which usually started its season a day early in what was known as the presidential opener. Congress recessed for the afternoon so members could attend. And unlike today, when presidents throw from
white house history quarterly
9
TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS BOTTOM: PETE SOUZA, WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
10
government clerks out of work early so they could attend, too. At the dawn of the new century, unfortunately, baseball did not have a fan in the Oval Office. Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, mocked the sport as a “mollycoddle game,” meaning pampered or overprotected. Apparently, baseball did not measure up to the Rough Rider’s ideal of a real man’s sport. That did not stop a delegation from the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues in 1907 from presenting Roosevelt with a season pass, made of solid 14K gold, to “recognize your practical support of a game that nourishes
white house history quarterly
no ‘mollycoddles.’”1 No hard feelings! Roosevelt’s protégé-turned-adversary, Taft, had a more favorable view of the sport and will always be etched in baseball history as the first president to throw out the first pitch. On a mild April afternoon in 1910, he made a low throw that Washington Senators Hallof-Fame pitcher Walter Johnson saved from an embarrassing bounce in the dirt. Less remembered is that Taft might have unwittingly cost Johnson a no-hitter. In the seventh inning, the Athletics’ Frank Baker hit a fly fall off Johnson in the direction of Washington outfielder Doc Gessler. But Gessler, as he admitted later, had been daydreaming of hitting a grand slam and talking to the president
ALL PHOTOS THIS SPREAD: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Taft’s toss. In a sign of how the sport had already become an important institution, a November 1860 editorial cartoon depicted the nation’s most consequential presidential election on a baseball diamond. The cartoon, by lithographers Currier & Ives, is titled “The National Game. Three ‘Outs’ and One ‘Run.’” Each candidate holds a bat featuring his political stance: “fusion,” “non-intervention,” “slavery extension,” and, in Abraham Lincoln’s case, “equal rights and free territory.” The president-elect is standing on home plate. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, attended a baseball tournament at the Ellipse in the summer of 1865, along with 6,000 other fans. He even let
opposite
President-elect Abraham Lincoln advises his opponents while standing on home plate in an 1860 editorial cartoon. The sport had become a national institution by this time. below
President Woodrow Wilson threw out the first ball for the Washington Senators’ opening day games on both April 14, 1915, and April 20, 1916, with Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, at his side each time. The Senators beat the New York Yankees in each match.
about it. He wound up tripping over a fan—spectators could stand on the field behind a rope back then—and the ball fell in for the only hit against Johnson that day. That presidential pitch might have ended up a one-off if not for the marketing savvy two years later of Washington’s new manager and part-owner, Clark Griffith. Recalling his thinking years later, Griffith wrote, “It occurred to me that this would be a fine annual custom. So I requested a meeting with him [Taft], and he received me very amiably. ‘I’d like to establish this as an annual function,’ I told him, ‘and if you would cooperate it might catch on.’” “Why sure, Griff. I’ll be glad to start the ball rolling,” Taft replied.2 The president had already missed opening day that year because of the sinking of the Titanic, but he came out two months later to resume the tradition.
white house history quarterly
Woodrow Wilson made several opening-day tosses and was such a big baseball fan that he kept a “dugout” at the White House, where he read and talked baseball. But Wilson’s most interesting connection to the sport happened after he left office. He had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed while still president, and after his presidency, he asked Griffith about coming to games. Griffith was worried about how to accommodate him. As he recalled: Finally, I got an idea. I phoned the president of the American League and asked him for permission to have Mr. Wilson’s automobile driven onto the field and parked outside the right-field foul line. “Well,” he said, “that might interfere with the right fielder, but if the umpires will sanction it, it’s all right with me.” I got in touch with
11
the umpires, and they gave me permission. Mr. Wilson’s car was parked between the foul line and the seats, and I stationed a player out there to sit on the bumper of the car and ward off any foul balls that might be headed for the automobile.3
ALL PHOTOS THIS SPREAD: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Unlike Wilson, President Calvin Coolidge was not that big of a baseball fan. That distinction belonged to his wife, Grace. But Silent Cal had the distinction of being the only president to witness a World Series championship in Washington. After the Senators clinched the 1924 pennant—their first in history—Coolidge hosted the team, telling the players, “By bringing the baseball pennant to Washington you have made the National Capital more truly the center of worthy and honorable national aspirations.” The president
12
white house history quarterly
above
On April 14, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tossed the first ball to start the baseball season for the Washington Senators and the New York Yankees. opposite
On September 5, 1924, the Washington Senators visited President Calvin Coolidge at the White House, where they posed for a group shot, and the president signed a baseball.
presented player-manager Bucky Harris with a “loving cup” as a gift and joked about how the Senators had taken hold of the city that season: “When the entire population reached the point of requiring the game to be described playby-play, I began to doubt whether the highest efficiency was being promoted.”4 Coolidge threw out the first pitch at the World Series opener, but it was his wife who kept score. Seven years later President Herbert Hoover attended another World Series game, but in much less happy circumstances. This Depression-era game was in Philadelphia, where the A’s were hosting the St. Louis Cardinals, and fans were in a sour mood over Prohibition. The notorious Philadelphia fans chanted “We Want Beer!” “I left the ball park with the chant of the crowd ringing in my ears: ‘We want beer!’” Hoover wrote in his memoirs.5 Hoover’s successor, Franklin D. white house history quarterly
Roosevelt, threw out a record eight opening-day pitches. Once again, a president indirectly affected action on the field. At the 1936 opener, Senators pitcher Bobo Newsom and third baseman Ossie Bluege converged on a bunt. While Bluege fielded it, the pitcher looked away from the ball to glance at FDR, and his third baseman nailed him in the face with the throw. Newsom suffered a broken jaw but still managed to throw a four-hit shutout. The next day, the Washington Post ran a piece mocking the president’s Secret Service detail: A group of grim-lipped, steel-eyed huskies, all wearing their right hands in their pockets with the nonchalance of long practice, slither past the Washington dugout to the president’s box. . . . The Secret Service men are as taut as greyhounds in the starting box. A reporter reaches in his pocket for
13
The next year, FDR became the first president to attend an All-Star Game—only the fifth one in history— in July 1937, as Congress was debating his ill-fated plan to pack the Supreme Court with extra justices. Despite the typically hot and sticky Washington weather, Roosevelt found relief from the political heat at the ballpark, where he won campaign-style adoration that afternoon. He waved his hat to cheering fans as his convertible made its way down the field, past a procession of lined up players. A recently discovered film captures this moment, along with rare footage of FDR walking—with assistance—to his seat. FDR also threw out the first pitch that afternoon. “If I didn’t have to hobble up those steps in front of all these people, I’d be out at the ballpark every day,” he once told Griffith, the Senators’ owner.7 In 1940, as he ran for an unprecedented third term, Roosevelt was not on top of his game on opening day. His first pitch hit a Washington Post photographer’s camera. FDR had a much greater impact on the sport, however, a couple of years later. After the United States entered World War II, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote the president asking whether the sport should continue. “If you believe we ought to close down for the duration of the war, we are ready to do so immediately,” Landis wrote. “If you feel we ought to continue, we would be delighted to do so. We await your order.” In what became known as the “Green Light Letter,” Roosevelt responded that it would be best for the country if
14
baseball continued: “There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.”8 During World War II the presidential opening-day tradition was suspended, but FDR’s successor Harry S. Truman made a point of throwing out the first pitch on September 8, 1945, just six days after Japan’s surrender was formalized aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo
below
The 1937 All-Star Game program cover featured a happy President Franklin D. Roosevelt preparing to throw the opening pitch. opposite
With what became known as the “Green Light Letter,” President Roosevelt expressed his personal opinion that baseball should continue during World War II and he calculated the number of people for whom it would provide a welcome break from long work days. The original letter is preserved in the collection of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
L E F T A N D O P P O S I T E : N A T I O N A L B A S E B A L L H A L L O F FA M E A N D M U S E U M
a cigarette, and his hand is jerked away before he can get it. . . . Finally the presidential heave takes place, and there ensues the maddest scramble you ever saw for the ball. Ball players, news photographers, cameramen, reporters, and a few civilians pile up like sandlot football players.6
white house history quarterly
white house history quarterly
15
16
white house history quarterly
When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing, and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real Major League Baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he’d like to be president of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.10
the Washington team upon his father Clark Griffith’s death a few years before. In a telegram, Truman told the team’s owner: “BEST OF LUCK TO YOU ON OPENING DAY AND EVERY DAY. WATCH OUT FOR THAT NIXON. DON’T LET HIM THROW YOU A CURVE. YOUR FRIEND, HARRY TRUMAN.”12 Later that season, Nixon traveled to the Soviet Union for the famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Back home, the woeful Senators were playing even worse than normal, losing a dozen games in a row. At the ballpark, one of Nixon’s favorite players, Washington slugger Roy Sievers, received a call. It was Nixon on the line, from the Soviet Union. “I want Lemon, Killebrew, Allison, and Sievers out at the airport when the plane lands,” Nixon demanded, instructing Sievers to bring his teammates Jim Lemon, Harmon Killebrew, and Bob Allison. “We were all there,” Sievers recalled. The first thing he said was, “What in the hell is wrong with the Senators?” And I said, “Mr. Vice
OPPOSITE: GETTY IMAGES / ALAMY
Eisenhower angered some baseball fans his first year as president, 1953, when he decided to go golfing in
Augusta, Georgia, rather than throw out the opening-day toss. He got a mulligan—on the baseball game, not the golf outing—when the Senators’ game was rained out, so he flew back and threw out the opening-day toss on the rescheduled opener. He stayed for just one and one-half innings before flying back to his golfing trip. Three years later, the All-Star Game came back to Washington, but this time there was no presidential first pitch, as Eisenhower was recovering from surgery. But he did announce that same day he was running for reelection. Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich panned the president’s timing, writing, “The first error of the 1956 All-Star festivities is committed by Mr. Eisenhower. On a day when the nation is baseball minded, Ike’s announcement that he will stand for reelection could wind up among the Sally League results,” a nickname for a low-level minor league.11 In 1959 Vice President Richard Nixon subbed for Eisenhower, and Truman sent a humorous warning to Calvin Griffith, who had taken over
ABOVE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Bay. Appearing in a suit and Panama hat at a Saturday afternoon game between the Senators and his home-state St. Louis Browns, Truman served to signal to Americans that things were back to normal. The crowd gave the president a huge ovation, and players from both teams lined up in front of him, caps over their chests. A southpaw, Truman in 1950 threw two ceremonial pitches, one from each hand, but the right-handed one was a dud. And things got even worse for him the following season. The day before the Senators 1951 home opener, General Douglas MacArthur, whom Truman had fired as Far East commander, gave a speech to a joint session of Congress, including his famous line, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” With that as the backdrop, angry fans booed Truman at the ballpark. The U.S. Air Force Band played “Ruffles and Flourishes” and “Hail to the Chief ” in an attempt to drown out the hecklers.9 President Dwight D. Eisenhower was an aspiring ballplayer before his career in the military and politics. Before attending West Point, he played baseball for money but used the pseudonym “Wilson,” to avoid jeopardizing his amateur status to play at West Point. He wound up getting cut from the varsity baseball team. He once reminisced:
opposite
President Harry Truman shakes hands with a fan at the September 8, 1945, Washington Senators game. above
While taking a short break from a golf trip in Augusta, Georgia, President Dwight D. Eisenhower tosses out the first pitch at the Washington Senators–New York Yankees game, April 16, 1953, as two future presidents, Senator Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Richard M. Nixon, look on from behind him. right
Substituting for President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon throws the first pitch to open the 1959 baseball season. Beside him is young David Eisenhower, the president’s grandson.
white house history quarterly
17
President, we’re just not hitting good, the pitching’s not good.” He said, “I tell you what, I’ll be out the next night.” Usually, when he’d come out, we’d win the ballgame. But we lost.13
rain storm led to a postponement. Nixon had to leave for a world trip, so Vice President Spiro Agnew filled in for him the next day. But the president still had baseball on his mind. Later that week, the Apollo astronauts returned to Earth from the Moon, and Nixon greeted them following their splashdown in the Pacific. “Incidentally, have you been able to follow some of the things that happened when you’ve gone. Did you know about the All-Star game?” Nixon asked. Neil Armstrong replied they had, and were sorry to hear that Nixon had to miss it.16 Two years later, the new Senators announced they would be leaving town, too, and this time there was no replacement team to take their place. But Nixon worked behind the scenes to try to find a new franchise for the nation’s capital. On October 13, 1971, two weeks after the Senators played their final game in Washington, the president had a meeting with Mayor Walter E. Washington about finding a new team
18
white house history quarterly
above
On April 10, 1961, President John F. Kennedy throws the first ball of the season from the stands at Griffith Stadium, home of the Washington Senators, as Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson looks on. opposite
President George W. Bush throws the ceremonial first pitch on the Nationals opening day in 2005. The occasion marked baseball’s return to Washington, D.C., after a thirty-three-year absence.
J O H N F. K E N N E D Y P R E S I D E N T I A L L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M
The streak hit eighteen before the Senators finally won a game. By the time John F. Kennedy became president, the Senators had left town, to become the Minnesota Twins. A new Washington team, also called the Senators, started play in JFK’s first year in office, 1961, which was also the last year of Griffith Stadium. The young president threw out the first pitch that year, and again the following season, in brand-new D.C. Stadium, which would be named for his slain brother at the end of the decade. Two Senators players, Jim Hannan and Jimmy Piersall, were driving to the stadium that day when Piersall’s car broke down in front of the White House. They left it there and took a cab to the ballpark. Hannan described the car as something like a “37 Chevy”—old even for back then. After the game, the White House placed a call to Piersall. “And Kennedy gets on and says, ‘What are you doing leaving that piece of junk in front of my house?’” Hannan recalled.14 But the president was just giving him a hard time: the two men knew each other from Kennedy’s days as a senator from Massachusetts, when Piersall played for the Boston Red Sox. Nixon was probably the most knowledgeable baseball fan of any president. In his first year in office, 1969, he hosted a reception of All-Stars, Hall-of-Famers, umpires, and sportswriters, where he made this rather surprising admissions: “I just want you to know that I like the job I have, but if I had to live my life over again, I would have liked to have ended up as a sportswriter.”15 That evening, Nixon had been scheduled to throw out the first pitch at the All-Star Game in Washington, but a monstrous
GETTY IMAGES
for the city. Nixon suggested two possible relocation candidates—the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians. In a tape-recorded conversation, Nixon said, “The White Sox is a possibility. Chicago really can’t support two teams.” Then discussing the Indians, he said, “Cleveland is not going to support them. They got that lousy lake front stadium.” As the meeting ended, the president said Washington would have a new team by 1976: “I think that with Washington, the [bi]centennial coming up and everything, baseball will be back.”17 But he was off by nearly three decades; baseball did not return until 2005. In between, presidents would sometimes travel to Baltimore or other cities to make the opening-day toss, but those visits seemed like placeholders until Washington got a new team. When it did, perhaps it was fitting that President George W. Bush, a onetime owner of the Texas Rangers—the team that had left Washington back in 1971— was there for the ceremonial first pitch
at the Nationals home opener at RFK Stadium. That afternoon, he told the American Society of News Editors: “I’ve got a decision to make. Do I go with the fastball or a slider?”18 NOTES 1.
William B. Mead and Paul Dickson, Baseball: The Presidents’ Game (New York: Walker, 1997), 17.
2. Quoted in Clark Griffith, “Presidents Who Have Pitched for Me,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1955, J7. 3. Ibid. 4. Calvin Coolidge, “Address at the Zero Milestone Welcoming Home the Washington Senators Baseball Team,” October 1, 1924, online at the American Presidency Project, https://www. presidency.ucsb.edu. 5. Quoted in Benjamin Freed, “Trump Isn’t Throwing Out the First Pitch at Nationals Park. Thank Goodness,” Washingtonian, March 28, 2017, online at https://www.washingtonian.com. 6. Bill McCormick, “Wandering Reporter and Secret Service Men Scan Big Crowd,” Washington Post, April 15, 1936, 21. 7. Quoted in Maryann Hudson, “Decades of Bipartisan Support: Nixon’s Yorba Linda Exhibit Explores Long Love Affair Between Presidents and Baseball,” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1992, C6. 8. Both letters are quoted in “President Roosevelt Gives ‘Green Light’ to Baseball,” National Baseball Hall of Fame website, https://
white house history quarterly
baseballhall.org. Roosevelt’s letter is dated January 15, 1942. 9. Murrey Marder, “Truman Draws Boos at Nat’s Opener,” Washington Post, April 21, 1951, 1. 10. Quoted in Carl M. Cannon, “At the White House, Baseball Holds a Place of Honor,” Baltimore Sun, April 3, 1993. 11. Shirley Povich, “This Morning,” Washington Post, July 11, 1956, 27. 12. Quoted in Curt Smith, The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 30. 13. Roy Sievers, interview by author, April 2005, in Frederic J. Frommer, You Gotta Have Heart (Lanham, Md.: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2013), 73. 14. Jim Hannan, interview by author, April 2005, in ibid., 72. 15. Richard Nixon, “Remarks at the Baseball All-Star Reception,” July 22, 1969, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1969 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1999), 539. 16. “Apollo 11, Day 9: Re-entry and Splashdown,” Apollo Flight Journal, National Aeronautics and Space Administration website, https://history. nasa.gov. 17. White House Tapes of the Nixon Administration, President Nixon in Oval Office with Stephen B. Bull, Walter E. Washington, Jerry V. Wilson, John D. Ehrlichman, and Egil G. “Bud” Krogh Jr., October 13, 1971. National Archives, College Park, Md. 18. Quoted in James G. Lakely, “Bush Throws Initial Pitch,” Washington Times, April 15, 2005, A14.
19