April 14, 1910: A new baseball season begins at American League Park in Washington, D.C. President William Howard Taft, who had been a catcher on the baseball team at Yale University, attends with his wife Helen, and throws out the ceremonial first ball.
Previously, Washington home openers had begun with a District of Columbia "commissioner" throwing out the first ball. Taft was the 1st President of the United States to do so. Thus, he started a tradition. More about that in a moment.
Standing in a special box set aside in the stands for the Presidential party, Taft threw the ball to the Senators' best player, pitcher Walter Johnson. Johnson, the best pitcher in baseball at the time, proceeded to pitch a a 1-hit shutout against the Philadelphia Athletics. The only hit he allowed was a double to A's 3rd baseman Frank Baker, not yet known as "Home Run" Baker. Johnson also walked 3 batters, and a batter reached base on an error.
The Senators won the game, 3-0. Johnson helped his own cause with a hit. Left fielder Jack Lelivelt went 2-for-3 with 2 RBIs, and 2nd baseman Herman "Germany" Schaefer went 3-for-4 with the team's other RBI. 1st baseman Bob Unglaub also got 3 hits, and center fielder Clyde Milan, one of the top baserunners of the time, also got 2 hits.
Legend has it that, at this game, Taft also invented the 7th inning stretch. In the middle of the 7th inning, he got up to loosen his stiffened limbs, and, out of respect to the office, all the fans got up, too. In fact, the tradition goes back to 1882, when Father Jasper Brennan, the athletic director at Manhattan College in New York, recognizing that having his players not in the game sit absolutely still for 9 innings was impractical, let them stand up in the middle of the 7th.
The 1910 opener was an aberration. The A's, managed by Connie Mack, went 102-48, and won the American League Pennant, finishing 14 1/2 games ahead of the team that finished 2nd, the New York Highlanders, who would become the Yankees in 1913. This began a string of 5 seasons in which the A's won 4 Pennants and 3 World Series.
The Senators, managed by Jimmy McAleer, went 66-85, finishing in 7th place, 36 1/2 games back. Early the next season, American League Park burned down, and was replaced by a new ballpark. In 1920, the Senators were bought by former major league pitcher Clark Griffith, who renamed the ballpark Griffith Stadium.
Taft threw out the first ball again on Opening Day in 1911. He did not do so in 1912, because he was attending a funeral, and Vice President James Sherman did it in his place. Taft's successor, Woodrow Wilson, threw out the first ball for Senators openers in 1913, 1915 and 1916.
There is no record of why he did not do so in 1914, but he didn't in 1917 or 1918, because he thought it unwise to have the President attend a baseball game while troops were fighting in World War I. He didn't do it in 1919, because he was in Europe for the Versailles Peace Conference; or in 1920, due to illness. Vice President Thomas Marshall filled in for him in 1917.
Griffith cultivated the tradition after that: The AL's first game of the season would be at Washington, so that the President could open the season with the ceremonial first ball; and the National League's 1st game would be in Cincinnati, in honor of the 1st openly professional baseball team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. From 1921 until 1955, whenever the President would come to the ballpark that bore Griffith's name, the President and the owner would pose together, along with the opposing teams' managers, as the President held up the ball for the photographers, and then the President would throw it for the newsreel cameras.
Warren Harding did it all 3 years that he was President: 1921, 1922 and 1923. Harding died in 1923, and, though he didn't like baseball, his successor, Calvin Coolidge, went to the openers, because his wife, Grace, did like the sport. Coolidge threw out the first ball in 1924, 1925, 1927 and 1928, but not in 1926, for unrecorded reasons.
Despite soon becoming unpopular, Herbert Hoover did it all 4 years he was President: 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1932. Franklin D. Roosevelt did it each of the 1st 9 years he was President, which wasn't easy, since he had polio, and he had to hold onto his seat with his left hand while he stood and threw the ball with his right. In 1940, his awkward throw went over the head of the now-retired Johnson, and hit the lens of the camera used by Washington Post photographer Irving Schlossberg. In 1941, the newsreel's microphone picked up his remark to Griffith about the previous year's mishap; that time, however, FDR's throw was okay.
After that, due to World War II, he didn't do it again. Vice President Henry Wallace did the honors in 1942 and 1944. In 1943, it was Paul McNutt, wartime manpower chief and former Governor of Indiana. In 1945, 4 days after FDR died in office, Sam Rayburn, the Texas Congressman who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives, threw out the first ball.
The war over, Harry Truman resumed the tradition in 1946, becoming the 1st President to throw out the first ball lefthanded. He did that again in 1947, 1948 and 1949. In 1950, he went one better, and threw out 2 balls, 1 with each hand. In 1951 and 1952, he again did it only lefty.
Griffith, now in his 80s, invited new President Dwight D. Eisenhower to throw out the first ball for the 1953 opener. "Ike" refused, saying he was going to play golf at Augusta National in Georgia, home of The Masters. What an insult to the national pastime. But the game was rained out -- Ike's golf date wasn't -- and he was able to do the honors at the rescheduled opener. He threw out the first ball all 8 years of his Presidency.
Griffith died in 1955, and his son, Calvin Griffith, moved the Senators to Minneapolis for the 1961 season, where they became the Minnesota Twins. An expansion team named the Washington Senators took their place. In 1961, John F. Kennedy threw out the first ball, the last one at Griffith Stadium. In 1962, he did it at the new District of Columbia Stadium, and again in 1963. Late that year, he was assassinated. Five years later, while running for President himself, so was his brother. In 1969, D.C. Stadium was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. (There was a John F. Kennedy Stadium, a football stadium in Philadelphia, formerly named Municipal Stadium.)
Lyndon B. Johnson threw out the first ball in 1964, 1965 and 1967. He let Vice President Hubert Humphrey do it in 1966 and 1968. In 1969, Richard Nixon did it. In 1970, he was unable to attend, and sent David Eisenhower -- grandson of Ike, husband of Nixon's daughter Julie, and somewhat qualified as the Senators' former team statistician -- to do it, and he was heavily booed. Not wanting a repeat of this, in 1971, Nixon sent someone absolutely unbooable: A recently released prisoner of war from Vietnam, U.S. Army Master Sergeant, and Green Beret, David Pitzer.
The "New Senators" also failed in Washington, and were moved to the Dallas area for the 1972 season, becoming the Texas Rangers. So Nixon didn't do it again in 1972. In 1973, he made the first Opening Day Presidential first pitch outside of D.C., at Anaheim Stadium, home of the California Angels, in Orange County, California, where he was born and raised. Nixon resigned in 1974. In 1976, Gerald Ford threw out the first ball on Opening Day at Arlington Stadium, home of the Rangers, the former Senators.
A few Presidents have attended World Series games, the 1st being Wilson in Philadelphia in 1915. While Jimmy Carter attended many Atlanta Braves games in his native Georgia after leaving the Presidency, he only went to 1 game while he was in office, and it wasn't an Opening Day.
But he picked a good one: Since Game 7 of the 1979 World Series was going to be played at what was then the closed MLB stadium to Washington, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, he went to that game. The Commissioner of Baseball, Bowie Kuhn, normally resistant to letting politicians throw out ceremonial first balls, not only let Carter do so, he let him participate in the presentation of the trophy to the visiting and victorious Pittsburgh Pirates.
In his previous career as an actor, Ronald Reagan played Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, himself named for the man who was President when he was born in 1887. Ironically, Cleveland didn't like baseball. In 1892, Benjamin Harrison became the 1st President to go to a major league game while in office.
In 1984, at Baltimore, Reagan revived the Presidential first ball tradition. Wearing an Orioles jacket over a bulletproof vest, he walked out to the pitcher's mound, got a standing ovation, and threw a strike. He was 73 years old. He also threw out the first ball at the Orioles' opener in 1986. Presidents, when they have done it, have done it from the mound ever since, always with a bulletproof vest under a jacket.
George H.W. Bush had been an All-American 1st baseman at Yale, and he threw out ceremonial first balls in Baltimore in 1989 and 1990. In 1991, he did it in Arlington, since his son, George W. Bush, had recently bought the Rangers. In 1992, running for re-election in a nasty recession, he threw out the first ball for the first game in the Orioles' new home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and it fell well short of the plate. He was vociferously booed. It was not a factor in his defeat that November.
Bill Clinton threw out first balls in Baltimore in 1993 and 1996, and before the first game at Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) in Cleveland in 1994. George W. Bush did it before the first game at Miller Park (now American Family Field) in Milwaukee in 2001, and made a bad pitch. Before Game 3 of that year's World Series at Yankee Stadium, mere weeks after the 9/11 attacks, he tried again, and threw a strike. He also threw out first balls in Cincinnati in 2003 and 2006, St. Louis in 2004, for the return to the capital for MLB with the Washington Nationals at RFK Stadium in 2005, and for the 1st game at the Nationals' new Nationals Park in 2008.
Barack Obama only threw out one ceremonial first ball on Opening Day, in 2010, in Washington, because it was the 100th Anniversary of the first event. Vice President Joe Biden filled in for him in 2009. Biden did not do so in 2021, his 1st year as President.
Donald Trump has only thrown out one ceremonial first ball, at Fenway Park in Boston, on August 18, 2006. It was the 2nd game of a 5-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox by their arch-rivals, the New York Yankees -- supposedly, Trump's favorite team. But, because he was in Boston, he wore a Red Sox jersey. Appropriate, given that both he and the Red Sox can't seem to win without cheating.
The NBC drama The West Wing closed out its 2003-04 season by showing President Josiah Bartlet throw out a ceremonial first ball on Memorial Day. He was shown practicing his throws, wearing the vest and the jacket, in the hall of the White House, and missing his practice catcher, even breaking priceless furniture.
The show's producers made a deal with MLB management and the Orioles, to have Bartlet's portrayer, Martin Sheen, throw out a pregame first ball. The real-life crowd gave him a standing ovation. While the episode ended with the screen going black just as Sheen released the ball, news footage showed the 63-year-old Sheen throwing a strike.
It also started in 1910, with William Howard Taft. Aside from being the nation's heaviest President ever, at 355 pounds -- Trump may have broken that record, but he will never admit it -- introducing the Presidential first ball tradition might be the thing for which Taft is best known. Certainly, he should be better remembered as the only President to have also served on the Supreme Court of the United States -- and as Chief Justice, no less, after his Presidency, from 1921 until shortly before his death in 1930.
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April 14, 1910 was a Thursday. These other baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Highlanders, who became the Yankees in 1913, and the Boston Red Sox played 14 innings at Hilltop Park in Upper Manhattan, before the game was called due to darkness, tied 4-4.
* The New York Giants lost to the Boston Braves, 3-2 in 11 innings at the South End Grounds in Boston.
* The Brooklyn Superbas beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-0 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Nap Rucker pitched a 2-hit shutout. The following season, the Superbas became the Brooklyn Dodgers.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 1-0 in 10 innings at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati. Fred Beebe pitched a 3-hit shutout. All 3 Cub hits came from right fielder Fred "Wildfire" Schulte. Between them, the famed double-play combination of shortstop Joe Tinker, 2nd baseman Johnny Evers and 1st baseman (and manager) Frank Chance went 0-for-11.
* The Cleveland Naps beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-7 at Bennett Park in Detroit. "Naps"? Yes, they were named for their manager, who was also their best player: Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, normally a 2nd baseman, but he played 1st base on this day. He went 1-for-3 with 2 walks and an RBI. For the Tigers, Ty Cobb went 3-for-5, while Sam Crawford went 4-for-5 with 5 RBIs. Addie Joss of Cleveland and George Mullin of Detroit both went the distance.
The season would also end with the focus on Lajoie and Cobb, as automobile company Chalmers promised a new car to the winner of the American League batting title. Cobb infamously sat out the last 2 games of the season, keeping his average at .385. Despite the St. Louis Browns' infield playing way back, allowing Lajoie to bat 8-for-8 including 6 bunt singles, he finished at .384. Due to the suspicious nature of the final day, Chalmers gave both men new cars. (Cobb was fine with it: He didn't care if Lajoie also got one, as long as he was awarded his.)
* The Chicago White Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 3-0 at South Side Park in Chicago. Frank Smith pitched a 1-hit shutout, allowing only a single to Ray Demmitt. On July 1, the White Sox would move into Comiskey Park, and stay there for 80 years.
* And the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-1 at Robison Field in St. Louis. Honus Wagner went 2-for-4 with a walk.
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