If you are a Facebook friend, you know my feelings about our sitting president. I have tried to keep all of that out of this site, believing baseball is a refuge from the cares and woes of the outside world.
Unfortunately, the reaction of the crowd to Donald Trump’s appearance at Game Five of the World Series has been taking up a lot of air time, emphasizing the boos that echoed through the stadium when his attendance was announced. Scores — perhaps hundreds– of comments, tweets, etc. Easy enough to search for those items so I’ll not elaborate on that any longer.
Nevertheless, sports and news outlets have focused on the event as a long-time link between presidents and the national pastime. This game marked the first time Trump, who claims to have been a very good player in school, showed up at a ballpark. The combination of his arrival and the return of a Washington franchise to the fall classic is a real unicorn sighting.
There have been a couple of really good books about the connection of the oval office and the baseball diamond, including The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House by Curt Smith, and Baseball: The Presidents’ Game, by Bill Mead and Paul Dickson. Highly recommended.
As an aside, yesterday I received a copy of Nicholas Evan Sarantakes’ Fan in Chief: Richard Nixon and American Sports, 1969-1974. Say what you will about Nixon — and the similarities of situations then and now, but he was an intense and savvy baseball follower.
is available on Amazon.com,
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