Today is President’s Day, which means I get to pen one of my favorite “annual columns” for the Baltimore Orioles. Just a reminder, the Birds open Grapefruit League play this coming Saturday against Pittsburgh at 1 PM in Sarasota. The game will be shown on MASN.
Baseball has a relationship with the wheels of government unlike any other sport. This is a tip of the cap to its status as “America’s pastime,” due in part to how old the game itself is. But also due to how beloved it is. President Lincoln allegedly made reference to the game of “base” as far back as the 1860’s. However in 1910 President William Howard Taft began what’s become one of the game’s grand traditions when he threw out the first pitch at a game between the Washington Senators and Philadelphia Athletics.
President Taft was a baseball fan. He enjoyed the game, and sportswriters of the day apparently were immediately drawn to him in the wake of this event due to his knowledge of the game. What nobody knew is that he began a tradition with what at the time seemed like an innocent gesture, bordering on a photo op.
Through the early part of the 20th century, almost every President did the honors. Some better than others. Some more willingly than others. President Calvin Coolidge didn’t particularly care for baseball. But his wife, Grace, loved it. Silent Cal went and did the deed. Odds are to keep peace in his home.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt once hit a Washington Post camera with his first pitch one Opening Day. It’s important to note that most of these first pitches took place at Griffith Stadium, home of the Washington Senators. President Wilson however became the first President to do it outside of DC when he did it at the 1915 World Series in Philadelphia.
Several Vice-Presidents also subbed for their boss, starting with Richard Nixon in 1959. Nixon was perhaps the biggest baseball fan (and overall sports fan) who’s ever occupied the White House. President Kennedy did the honors in 1961, his first year as President. He would also open up the new “DC Stadium” on Opening Day with a first pitch, a stadium which still stands (technically…), but is more famously known as RFK Stadium – bearing the name of his slain brother.
Baseball was absent from DC from 1972-2005, and in that span the “Presidential Opener” was at times moved to Baltimore. Memorial Stadium saw the likes of Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush do the honors. For the record, it was President Reagan who became the first to throw out the first ball from the mound – previously it was done with the President sitting in the front row.
President Bill Clinton was the last POTUS to do it at Camden Yards. But the park was opened in 1992 with the aforementioned President George Herbert Walker Bush throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day. Bush later appeared on the HTS telecast. I remember Chuck Thompson commenting that the ball was in the dirt. The former Yale first baseman didn’t skip a beat; he said the catcher called for a slider low-and-away, and he felt he executed the pitch perfectly. Well said, Mr. President!
Following the return of baseball to our Nation’s Capital in the form of the Washington Nationals, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have done the honors at RFK Stadium and Nationals Park. President Obama is the last sitting President to throw a Presidential opening pitch. (Joe Biden did it at Oriole Park as Vice-President as well.) I can’t speak as to why the tradition has fallen away…
…but I think it should continue. I’m a history buff; I can name the Presidents in order from Washington to Trump, and I can probably tell you an anecdote or two about most of them as well – some more than others of course (some of those early guys were fascinating characters, while the Millard Fillmore’s of the world were fairly drab). Of all the annual recurring columns I write, this one is my favorite. It allows me to combine my love of history and the Presidency with baseball as a whole. And I always end it the same way, in pointing squarely at the current President:
I think the President of the United States should throw out the first ball on Opening Day in Washington DC every year.
Birdland Crush 