Nixon's Head
04-02-2007, 03:18 PM
This is a baseball story, so let’s get right to the stats.
Monday is Washington’s 65th Opening Day since 1910, when William Taft gave us a tradition: the ceremonial first pitch by the president. Taft threw the inaugural one for the Senators that year. In the local club’s 63 home openers since, a dozen presidents have done the honors 45 times, from front-row seats or from the mound, making them 46 for 64 overall (.719). Pretty reliable.
President Bush kept up the tradition in 2005, celebrating baseball’s return to the nation’s capital after a 33-season absence. But he missed last year’s home opener — and he’ll miss today’s, when the Nationals host the Florida Marlins at 1:05 p.m. Except for when the world was at war, only two other presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon, missed Opening Day ceremonies two years in a row. And Wilson had suffered a stroke.
What gives?
“Oh, yes, he was invited,” said Bush spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore. She said the president, an avid baseball fan and former part owner of the Texas Rangers, would love to be there. But “it’s not possible with his schedule. He’s got various meetings during the day, a meeting earlier in the morning. ... It just wasn’t going to work out.”
With Bush’s approval ratings stuck below 40 percent in recent polls, Lawrimore was asked whether the president feared he’d get booed. “No,” she replied. “Certainly not.”
Long ago, when baseball held a singular grip on America’s imagination, a president’s decision to skip Opening Day was cause for headlines. Usually a personal tragedy or historic crisis or calamity was to blame, though not always. President Eisenhower wanted to skip the 1953 home opener to play golf, and he took a beating for it in the newspapers.
“It’s hard to understand today how huge baseball was for so many Americans in those generations,” said John Odell, a curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “And you can’t help but admit that it’s just not the case anymore.”
Last Opening Day, while Vice President Dick Cheney filled in on the RFK mound (and heard some boos), Bush was in the Midwest, talking with senior citizens about Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. His meetings Monday are in the White House.
As for Cheney, his office said he’ll be in Alabama, speaking at a reception for a Republican senator.
Nationals President Stan Kasten said it’s not surprising Bush has turned down first-ball invitations two years in a row, given the weight of his duties.
“It was understood, and we’re moving on,” Kasten said.
The team said Monday’s first-ball honors will involve a grandson of Senators immortal Walter Johnson; the widow of Negro Leaguer Wilmer Fields, who starred for Washington’s Homestead Grays; new Nats Manager Manny Acta; and former Senators players Chuck Hinton and Mickey Vernon.
Still, Kasten said, “There’s no question the Nationals would always want the president to throw out the first ball. Every year. Forever. ... It distinguishes us.”
(optional add end)
Starting in 1927, presidents showed up for 12 straight home openers. And they attended 13 in a row beginning in 1946. “I suspect the demands of the office are very different now,” Kasten said.
At the Senators’ 1910 home opener, the sight of the nation’s 335-pound chief executive hurling a baseball toward the mound from his seat in American League Park delighted the spectators.
“TAFT TOSSES BALL,” announced The Washington Post. “Crowd Cheers President’s Fine Delivery of the Sphere.”
Through the Roaring ‘20s and the Great Depression, to the eve of World War II, four presidents missed only two openers at Griffith Stadium in two decades — 19 for 21 (.905). Only the death of Calvin Coolidge’s father in 1926 and Franklin Roosevelt’s insistence on attending a family gathering in 1939 kept the White House from batting 1.000.
“The ballpark in those days was one place where the president could go out, and you weren’t a Democrat or a Republican,” Odell said. “It was where the focus of America was — on baseball.”
And in the end, there was Nixon: He missed the Senators’ Opening Day festivities in 1970, arriving in the fifth inning, after a key congressional vote. And he missed all of the final home opener, April 5, 1971, before the team played out its season and moved away. Like Bush on Monday, Nixon had meetings that afternoon.
Source (http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2007/04/02/nationworld.qp-005951.sto).
Monday is Washington’s 65th Opening Day since 1910, when William Taft gave us a tradition: the ceremonial first pitch by the president. Taft threw the inaugural one for the Senators that year. In the local club’s 63 home openers since, a dozen presidents have done the honors 45 times, from front-row seats or from the mound, making them 46 for 64 overall (.719). Pretty reliable.
President Bush kept up the tradition in 2005, celebrating baseball’s return to the nation’s capital after a 33-season absence. But he missed last year’s home opener — and he’ll miss today’s, when the Nationals host the Florida Marlins at 1:05 p.m. Except for when the world was at war, only two other presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon, missed Opening Day ceremonies two years in a row. And Wilson had suffered a stroke.
What gives?
“Oh, yes, he was invited,” said Bush spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore. She said the president, an avid baseball fan and former part owner of the Texas Rangers, would love to be there. But “it’s not possible with his schedule. He’s got various meetings during the day, a meeting earlier in the morning. ... It just wasn’t going to work out.”
With Bush’s approval ratings stuck below 40 percent in recent polls, Lawrimore was asked whether the president feared he’d get booed. “No,” she replied. “Certainly not.”
Long ago, when baseball held a singular grip on America’s imagination, a president’s decision to skip Opening Day was cause for headlines. Usually a personal tragedy or historic crisis or calamity was to blame, though not always. President Eisenhower wanted to skip the 1953 home opener to play golf, and he took a beating for it in the newspapers.
“It’s hard to understand today how huge baseball was for so many Americans in those generations,” said John Odell, a curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “And you can’t help but admit that it’s just not the case anymore.”
Last Opening Day, while Vice President Dick Cheney filled in on the RFK mound (and heard some boos), Bush was in the Midwest, talking with senior citizens about Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. His meetings Monday are in the White House.
As for Cheney, his office said he’ll be in Alabama, speaking at a reception for a Republican senator.
Nationals President Stan Kasten said it’s not surprising Bush has turned down first-ball invitations two years in a row, given the weight of his duties.
“It was understood, and we’re moving on,” Kasten said.
The team said Monday’s first-ball honors will involve a grandson of Senators immortal Walter Johnson; the widow of Negro Leaguer Wilmer Fields, who starred for Washington’s Homestead Grays; new Nats Manager Manny Acta; and former Senators players Chuck Hinton and Mickey Vernon.
Still, Kasten said, “There’s no question the Nationals would always want the president to throw out the first ball. Every year. Forever. ... It distinguishes us.”
(optional add end)
Starting in 1927, presidents showed up for 12 straight home openers. And they attended 13 in a row beginning in 1946. “I suspect the demands of the office are very different now,” Kasten said.
At the Senators’ 1910 home opener, the sight of the nation’s 335-pound chief executive hurling a baseball toward the mound from his seat in American League Park delighted the spectators.
“TAFT TOSSES BALL,” announced The Washington Post. “Crowd Cheers President’s Fine Delivery of the Sphere.”
Through the Roaring ‘20s and the Great Depression, to the eve of World War II, four presidents missed only two openers at Griffith Stadium in two decades — 19 for 21 (.905). Only the death of Calvin Coolidge’s father in 1926 and Franklin Roosevelt’s insistence on attending a family gathering in 1939 kept the White House from batting 1.000.
“The ballpark in those days was one place where the president could go out, and you weren’t a Democrat or a Republican,” Odell said. “It was where the focus of America was — on baseball.”
And in the end, there was Nixon: He missed the Senators’ Opening Day festivities in 1970, arriving in the fifth inning, after a key congressional vote. And he missed all of the final home opener, April 5, 1971, before the team played out its season and moved away. Like Bush on Monday, Nixon had meetings that afternoon.
Source (http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2007/04/02/nationworld.qp-005951.sto).