Description
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 p
