Just a little outside...

One of my other obsessions, aside from presidential history, is baseball. Today, the two come together, since on April 14, 1910, a century ago to the day, President William Howard Taft began a tradition that continues to this day, that of Presidents throwing out the ceremonial first pitch of a major league baseball game. Taft threw out the first pitch in a game at National Park in Washington, DC between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators. The President didn't help the home team, the Senators, as was the their habit, lost 3-0. I can't find a record of how Taft's throw was, but I'm pretty sure he was wide. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.) The next year in 1911, Taft did it again, and the Senators had better luck, beating their opponents by a score of 8-5.

Here's a picture of Ronald Reagan throwing out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game. For a brief period in his career, Reagan was a broadcaster for Cubs games. To be more precise, he never actually broadcast Cubs games, he re-created them from telegraph reports while working for Des Moines radio station WHO in the 1930s.



In this video, President Clinton reminisces about his first pitch, which was thrown from the pitcher's mound.



President George W. Bush attended a game at Yankee Stadium in 2001 after the September 11th attacks, to throw out this first pitch.



Finally, here's a video of President Barack Obama throwing out the first pitch to open this season for the Washington Nationals. True to his home, the President wears a Nationals jacket, but the cap of his hometown Chicago White Sox. The pitch was high and just a little outside, but give the man a break, his main sport is basketball.