They played the major league baseball All–Star Game last night.
When I was growing up, it was a rare opportunity to see the best players that baseball had to offer. We didn't have televised games on numerous channels every night of the week because we didn't have cable. We got to see one game a week — two, on rare occasions — via the "Game of the Week" on Saturday afternoons.
It was special because, in those days, you just knew that the players you saw in the All–Star Game would end up in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., some day. Maybe it was because I was a young boy who avidly collected baseball cards and didn't have adult worries, like finding a job or a place to live or being able to put food on the table, but I knew the starting lineups of just about every major league club (there were fewer of them in those days).
Today I know the names of a handful of players in the majors, and the rest of them sound like minor leaguers to me, even though most of them probably aren't.
But, whether the players in the All–Star Game were truly worthy of ending up in Cooperstown or they were just being rewarded for a great season, one thing is certain in my memory. I remember the next–day reports on the game actually being about the game.
Not about whoever threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
That is not the case, apparently, in 2009.
Numerous blogs that I have seen today asserted that, based on his pitching form (and, presumably, the "mom jeans" he wore), Barack Obama "throws like a girl." You can judge for yourself, I guess. I have attached the video of his pitch to this post, but I can't really reach a conclusion from Fox's camera angle.
The assertion that I would take issue with, though, is Carol Lee's claim at Politico.com that Obama "checked a signature presidential tradition off his list" with his pitch last night.
Throwing out the first pitch at an All–Star Game is hardly a "presidential tradition." Presidents seldom throw out the first pitch at the All–Star Game, as one of Lee's former employers, the New York Times, reported last weekend.
Before last night, Gerald Ford was the last president to throw out the first pitch at an All–Star Game back in 1976, the year of America's Bicentennial. Perhaps in honor of the occasion, Ford threw out two first pitches, one with each hand. Or perhaps it was a way to show how inclusive he believed himself to be. At the time, Ford was involved in a heated campaign for the GOP nomination with Ronald Reagan.
In fact, if there is anything resembling a "presidential tradition" of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, it is at the season opener. Every president from William Howard Taft to George W. Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a season–opening game. Obama did not do so this year because he was attending the G–8 summit in Europe. Vice President Joe Biden threw out the first pitch instead.
I suspect that, aside from the obvious political differences, much of the negative reaction to Obama's pitching form was more the result of a comparison to George W. Bush's first pitch at the World Series that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That pitch, most observers felt, was a strike.
Oh, and by the way — the American League beat the National League again, 4–3.
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