Will baseball-skeptical Biden bring any joy to Mudville?

Time is running out on President Biden if he hopes to avoid the ignominy of being the first White House occupant in 116 years not to attend a Major League Baseball game while in office. There are only three games left to be played at Nationals Park—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday against the president’s favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies.

If he misses those opportunities, Biden’s only chance to avoid the baseball hall of shame would be in the playoffs that begin next week, also including his Phillies, winners of the National League East division.

This is not what baseball fans—or White House aides—expected when he took office. His predecessor, Donald Trump, despite being a former baseball player, spent much of his presidency avoiding baseball games, likely because he knew what kind of reception he'd get in the mostly Democratic metropolitan areas that are home to MLB teams. When he finally made an appearance at a World Series game at Nationals Park in 2019, his fears were realized. When shown on the video screen, he was booed and greeted with chants of “Lock him up!"

“I have searched in vain for any—any—anecdote or even allusion to Biden being a baseball fan. It doesn’t seem to exist,” said Curt Smith, author of The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball & the White House. The leading expert on the topic, Smith is a former White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and has just issued an updated version of his 2018 book to add a chapter on Biden and baseball.

“Biden did not grow up with baseball. Yes, he played it. But he’s talked far more often about his prowess on the gridiron. There’s nothing really to grab on to in terms of his affinity, or lack of affinity, for baseball. It’s the damnedest thing,” said Smith, who found more anecdotes about pre-baseball presidents like George Washington dabbling in early versions of the game.

When the White House aide was asked if Biden is a “baseball fan,” his response was, “He’s a sports fan. He’s been to games in the past. He played sports.” The president has talked often about “bleeding orange” for Syracuse University basketball and about his days playing high school and college football. Just last Friday, he met with members of the football team at his high school while hosting the Quad summit there.

One of the few times he talked about playing baseball was on July 2, 2021, when he welcomed the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 2020 World Series champions, to the White House. After finishing his prepared remarks, he started reminiscing about his exploits in a congressional baseball game shortly after he took office in 1973. “In the very beginning, I used to be a centerfielder and my Walter Mitty dream—anyways, it’s a long story,” he said, cutting himself off.

Then he told the story about a hit he said he got in either his first or second congressional game, one he said impressed his young sons. It was, he said, in “the old Washington stadium. And I hit one off the right-center-field wall. It bounced off the wall. I think it’s 368 … but off the wall.” It was a single. He concluded, “Here I thought: What could have been. What could have been.”

Unfortunately, the story did not hold up well under fact-checking, first by the hostile Republican National Committee and then by the neutral Snopes.com site. The RNC noted that he went 0 for 2 in the 1974 game and did not have an at-bat in 1975. He did have a hit in the 1973 game, but no one recalls a “368-foot” single. And the game was played in Baltimore, not a stadium in Washington. “We’re not sure it happened,” Snopes concluded gently.

Mostly, the president’s talk about baseball has turned to tales of the true fan in the family—first lady Jill Biden. Appearing by video on Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC show during the COVID lockdown in March 2020, Biden wore a Phillies cap because it was Opening Day. Kimmel joked that was not a way to win votes from fans of other teams. “But it’s the way to be able to sleep with my wife,” said Biden. “She’s a Philly girl. If I weren’t into the Phillies, I’d be out of luck, man.”

She is the one who left the campaign trail to cheer for the Phillies at the 2008 World Series and also attended the 2022 Series when the Phillies were the NL champs. And she—not her husband—is the one with touching childhood stories about baseball. She has talked about watching games on the family’s black-and-white Philco TV. “I was a little girl,” she told ABC in 2009. “It was a great father-daughter memory for me.”

Biden has reminisced about the last time he threw out a first pitch, when he was vice president. “I remember everybody talked about—they said, ‘Well, why are you doing it from the rubber?’ I said, ‘Because that’s where you pitch from,’” he said in a 2021 Opening Day interview with Sage Steele of ESPN. He was pleased, he said, that the pitch “went across the plate.”

Every sitting president from William Howard Taft to Barack Obama threw a first pitch until Trump broke that tradition. Now, Biden is at risk of breaking the tradition of attending a game, one started by Benjamin Harrison in 1892 and unbroken since Taft in 1909.

There was a time when a president would be heavily criticized if he skipped an opening day. In 1953, when Dwight Eisenhower chose to play golf at Augusta National instead of attending the Senators’ first game, he was “eviscerated,” said Smith. Learning his lesson, Ike rushed back for a mulligan when the game was rained out. He was there for the actual first game. “He recognized the severity of his mistake and never made that mistake again,” said Smith.

“Let’s be honest,” added Smith. “It’s not as if Biden’s schedule is too busy for him to squeeze in nine innings here and there. It’s just unfortunate to have a tradition like this end in Biden’s tenure. I don’t see what he gains out of it.”