The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House
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Book Overview
The Presidents and the Pastime draws on Curt Smith's extensive background as a former White House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between the "most American" sport--baseball--and the U.S. presidency. Smith, who USA Today has called "America's voice of authority on baseball broadcasting," begins before America's birth, when would-be presidents played baseball antecedents. He charts how baseball cemented its reputation as America's pastime in the nineteenth century. Smith tracks every U.S. president from Theodore Roosevelt to Joe Biden, each chapter filled with anecdotes: Woodrow Wilson, buoyed by baseball after suffering disability; a heroic Franklin Roosevelt, saving baseball in World War II; Jimmy Carter, taught the game by his mother, Lillian; and George H. W. Bush, who explained, "Baseball has everything." The Presidents and the Pastime provides a riveting narrative of how America's leaders have treated baseball. From William Howard Taft, the first president to throw the "first pitch" on Opening Day in 1910, to Barack Obama's "Go White] Sox " scrawled in the guest register at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 2014, our presidents have deemed it the quintessentially American sport.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1496241029
ISBN13:9781496241023
Release Date:October 2024
Publisher:University of Nebraska Press
Length:514 Pages
Weight:1.64 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"
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