[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Major League Baseball calendar is set to kick off on April 3, and while every team’s fan base comes into the season with a host of questions about playoff chances, roster spots and divisional races, I’ve got another question as we wait for Opening Day.
Will President Trump throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Nationals Park?
Now, before huge swaths of readers begin to turn the page, alarmed at politics creeping into the sports section, fear not; this isn’t a politically charged column.
But for some reason, presidential first pitches have always been an interest of mine, and after hearing reports this week that Trump was considering making the long walk out to the mound this year, I’m wondering if he will go through with it.
There’s a long history of presidential first pitches, dating all the way back to William Howard Taft in 1910. Every sitting president since then has undertaken the task at least once, be it before Opening Day, the MLB All-Star Game or a World Series contest.
The degrees of success have been, well, varied.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously hit a newspaper camera back in 1940. In 2009, Barack Obama made waves for his first pitch at the All-Star Game in St. Louis, and was derided for his decision to wear jeans, and worst of all, a Chicago White Sox pullover.
George W. Bush, on the other hand, fired a perfect strike from the mound before the first World Series game in New York City following the events of 9/11 in what even his most ardent critics would agree was a moment that transcended our national pastime.
So what will President Trump do?
I have no idea.
There’s no doubt that the president has a long history with baseball. He played the game in high school and was a longtime fixture at Yankee Stadium when the Bronx Bombers were owned by his pal George Steinbrenner. He fashions himself as a man of the people, and what better way to demonstrate that by participating in a century-old tradition that is about as American as it comes?
On the other hand, he similarly revels in the idea of being an iconoclast, of breaking away from the trappings of the presidency, so maybe he will forgo the pitch?
Not to mention, the crowd in Washington, D.C.—a city in which Trump drew just 4 percent of the vote in the presidential election—might not give him the warmest reception, something that might also scare him away from stepping on the field.
But if he’s reading—he isn’t—I’d urge him to get out there on Monday, throw out the first pitch, and let us get on with the baseball season as if was simply business as usual in the Capitol.
It may not fix the problems facing this country, it may not bridge any political divide between our citizens, but it will, for at least a few minutes, possibly distract us from the grave problems facing our nation.
And at its core, isn’t that what baseball is all about?
