The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House

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.

Curt Smith is the author of eighteen books, including George H. W. Bush: Character at the Core (Potomac, 2014); Memories at the Microphone: A Century of Baseball Broadcasting; and Voices of The Game, named by Esquire magazine among ＂the 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written.＂ A senior lecturer of English at the University of Rochester, Smith has addressed the White House Historical Association, hosted ＂Voices of The Game＂ series at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and been named to the Judson Welliver Society of former presidential speechwriters.