The Presidents and the Pastime - Curt Smith

The Presidents and the Pastime

The History of Baseball and the White House

(Autor)

Buch | Softcover
504 Seiten
2024
University of Nebraska Press (Verlag)
978-1-4962-4102-3 (ISBN)
32,40 inkl. MwSt
The first in-depth historical yet also anecdotal and episodic examination of the unique relationship between the U.S. presidency and America’s national pastime, from Theodore Roosevelt to Joe Biden.
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.  

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Beginnings: 1700s to Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1909
2. Power of Two: William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, 1909–1921
3. Triple Play: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, 1921–1933
4. “The Champ”: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933–1945
5. The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman, 1945–1953
6. “From the Heart of America”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953–1961
7. “The First Irish Brahmin”: John F. Kennedy, 1961–1963
8. Larger Than Life: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–1969
9. Nixon’s the One: Richard Nixon, 1969–1974
10. “Friendship, a Perfect Blendship!”: Gerald Ford, 1974–1977
11. From Softball to Hardball: Jimmy Carter, 1977–1981
12. The Gipper: Ronald Reagan, 1981–1989
13. The Baseball Lifer: George H. W. Bush, 1989–1993
14. Our Man Bill: William Jefferson Clinton, 1993–2001
15. W.: George W. Bush, 2001–2009
16. The Pioneer: Barack Obama, 2009–2017
17. The Donald and the Game: Donald Trump, 2017–
Bibliography
Index    

Erscheint lt. Verlag 1.10.2024
Zusatzinfo 24 photographs, 1 illustration, index
Verlagsort Lincoln
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt Sachbuch/Ratgeber Sport Ballsport
Sozialwissenschaften Politik / Verwaltung
Weitere Fachgebiete Sportwissenschaft
ISBN-10 1-4962-4102-9 / 1496241029
ISBN-13 978-1-4962-4102-3 / 9781496241023
Zustand Neuware
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