U.S. presidents’ love affair with baseball dates back to George Washington, who wrote in his journal that during Valley Forge he “sometimes throws and catches a ball for hours with his aide-de-camp.”
Every president since Washington, except Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, had a passion for baseball, as Washington then referred to the game. Roosevelt thought baseball was a “mollycoddle game,” and Coolidge attended to appease his passionate-fan wife, Grace.
Abraham Lincoln, upon hearing in 1860 that he won the presidential nomination, allegedly responded, “They’ll have to wait a few minutes (for his formal acceptance) until I have another turn at bat.” In 1893, Herbert Hoover was Stanford University’s shortstop, and at age 88 called himself one of the sport’s “oldest fans.” In 1910, William Howard Taft became the first president to toss out the now-traditional first pitch.
