num_pages: 504
description: The Presidents and the Pastime draws on Curt Smiths extensive background as a former White House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between baseball the most American sport and the U.S. presidency.Smith who USA TODAY calls Americas voice of authority on baseball broadcasting starts before Americas birth when wouldbe presidents played baseball antecedents. He charts how baseball cemented its reputation as Americas pastime in the nineteenth century such presidents as Lincoln and Johnson playing town ball or giving employees time off to watch. Smith tracks every U.S. president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump each chapter filled with Wilson buoyed by baseball after suffering disability; a heroic FDR saving baseball in World War II; Carter taught the game by his mother Lillian; Reagan airing baseball on radio that he never sawby re-creation.George H. W. Bush for whom Smith wrote explains Baseball has everything. Smith having interviewed a majority of presidents since Richard Nixon shares personal stories on each. Throughout The Presidents and the Pastime provides a riveting narrative of how Americas leaders have treated baseball. From Taft as the first president to throw the first pitch on Opening Day in 1910 to Obamas Go Sox! scrawled in the guest register at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014 our presidents have deemed it the quintessentially American sport enriching both their office and the nation. 
language: English
title: The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House
publisher: University of Nebraska Press