Glenn Vance

The First Pitch

William Howard Taft started the tra­di­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial “first pitch” of base­ball sea­son. The event took place on April 4, 1910, dur­ing an open­ing day game between the Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors and the Philadel­phia Athletics.

Since Taft’s first pitch¹, every Pres­i­dent but one has opened at least one base­ball sea­son dur­ing their tenure. The excep­tion: Jimmy Carter. Maybe he just didn’t like baseball.

1. See Wikipedia for a com­plete list. [↩]

29. December 2006 by Glenn Vance
Categories: History | Leave a comment