The Presidents and the Pastime

<p><em>The Presidents and the Pastime</em> 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.</p><p>Smith who <em>USA Today</em> 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.</p><p><em>The Presidents and the Pastime</em> 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.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Curt Smith</strong> is the author of eighteen books including <em>George H. W. Bush: Character at the Core</em> (Potomac 2014); <em>Memories at the Microphone: A Century of Baseball Broadcasting</em>; and <em>Voices of The Game</em> named by <em>Esquire</em> 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 the 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.</p><p><br></p>