{"product_id":"9781496241023-presidents-the-pastime","title":"The Presidents and the Pastime","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe History of Baseball and the White House\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Presidents and the Pastime\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Smith, who \u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e 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.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Presidents and the Pastime\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41828902600801,"sku":"9781496241023","price":27.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/stand_37620321_9261aee3-3e46-4450-be6b-a4ab0eb04134.jpg?v=1762224383","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781496241023-presidents-the-pastime","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}