In the Game of Political Glad-Handing, Clinton Hits the Long Ball

On the day before the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton on Monday dodged the most pressing questions of the day.

“The designated hitter--you like it?” hollered bleacher bum Steve Rose as Clinton greeted nearby fans at a spring training baseball stadium here.

“How do you feel about Astroturf?”

The answers were lost to history. Clinton gave what Rose determined to be a “noncommittal wave” and slid by, his security entourage and trailing reporters displacing ordinary fans who figured you went to a baseball stadium to see, well, baseball.

Not on Monday. The baseball season may be just warming up, but political glad-handing is at playoff stride.

In that, Clinton was hitting the long ball Monday. He showed up in Florida, site of one Super Tuesday primary. He donned the jacket and cap of the Houston Astros, whose home state also has a primary today.

He shook hands with the manager of the Boston Red Sox, but kept his Astros hat on--a sure sign of his low expectations for Massachusetts, whose primary today is expected to deliver victory to Paul E. Tsongas, the state’s former senator.

There is always the chance that a politician can look a little silly, holding court on a baseball field about such things as the gas tax and foreign policy while surrounded by men in Spandex pants. One can look even sillier if those subjects come up while you have a black mitt on your hand, as Clinton had Monday.

“You know what the difference in baseball and politics is?” Clinton asked at one point, apropos of nothing. “If you hit .250 in baseball, you can make a million dollars and be in the major leagues.”

And in politics? “You gotta have a lot higher percentage. Just to survive.”

And, he added: “We both deal with fastballs and curves.”

Visits like this to cultural Americana are the political equivalent of trips to shrines. For every small-town grocery store that gets visited in New Hampshire, there is a synagogue that gets a speech in Florida. Some places are simply irresistible. This last week, tourists at the Alamo in San Antonio had a better chance to get up close and personal with Paul Tsongas and Pat Buchanan than with the ghost of Davy Crockett. Although Buchanan, donning a coonskin cap and sporting a musket, did do a fair Crockett imitation.

Baseball stadiums, with their mom-and-apple-pie sensibility and suggestions of manly competition, have a special place for the political road warriors. George Bush, former Yale first baseman, spent almost as many hours in ballparks in 1988 as he did in the hotel suite in Texas that he calls his formal home.

Even if it may seem out of place, it is still considered acceptable form to bring up substantive issues at ballparks. Thus did Clinton describe Tsongas’ proposed gas tax as destructive to the tourist industry here, and vow that he would do a better job at cracking down on malevolent insurance companies than the former senator.

To the fans who withstood humidity and a pounding sun to watch baseball, Clinton probably looked a bit overdressed, with his gray suit pants and white dress shirt. His only accession to form was to loosen his striped tie.

He did, however, play catch with Astros manager Art Howe, with whom he briefly launched into a discussion of why he made a poor baseball player. It seems his left eye and right eye don’t coordinate well.

“Ah, the vision thing,” said one bystander.