President Takes to the Mound Armed With “30-mph Fastball”
President Bush combined two of his passions -- baseball and politics -- on Monday, throwing the ceremonial first pitch as the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago Cubs opened their seasons.
Bush, whose political world of late has been as chilly as Cincinnati’s 50-degree opening day temperature, landed his pitch in the vicinity of home plate, despite a stiff breeze. It was just wide enough to be considered a brushback on a right-handed hitter. Reds’ catcher Jason LaRue grabbed it from a modified crouch.
“Jason LaRue said he had a real hard time gauging that 30-mph fastball,” Bush told CBS News reporter Peter Maer on his way from the press box, where he gave a short interview to the game announcers.
Still, the Reds would have been forgiven for leaving the president on the mound. Starter Aaron Harang gave up five runs in the first inning and eventually lost in a rout, 16-7.
Bush left his Texas ranch Monday morning -- about 100 miles from where the Texas Rangers, the team in which he once shared ownership, were playing the Boston Red Sox -- to attend the Reds’ opener at the 3-year-old Great American Ball Park.
His host was an old baseball and political friend, Robert Castellini, who helped raise more than $100,000 for the president’s reelection campaign in 2004.
Castellini was a partner with Bush in the Rangers franchise. Bush assembled the managing group in 1989, five years before he ran for governor of Texas. Castellini, now the Reds’ chief executive, is part of a group that bought the Reds from his father-in-law, businessman Carl Lindner, after the 2005 season.
The president, who wore a Cincinnati warmup jacket over his dress shirt, had practiced his pitching at his ranch Saturday with Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
Before taking the field, Bush visited each clubhouse.
He asked Cubs Manager Dusty Baker, “This is the year, right?” It hasn’t been the Cubs’ year since Theodore Roosevelt was president. That was 1908. Bush is known for occasional sarcasm. But he also thinks of himself as an optimist.
“Dusty Baker, good to know you,” the president added, turning to the cameras and encouraging the manager to smile.
Baker did so and said, “I’ll do what I got to do.”
In the Reds’ clubhouse, Bush asked right-hander David Weathers for pitching tips. Slugger Ken Griffey Jr., with whom Bush shook hands, presented the president with a black baseball bat.
Bush never achieved the baseball prowess of his father, a Yale first baseman who kept his old mitt in his Oval Office desk. He has nonetheless never lost his attachment to the game. He is said to be able to spout long-ago major league lineups when challenged.
According to an account assembled by ABC News, the president has attended at least some of eight games -- not counting the occasional T-ball game for youngsters on the White House South Lawn.
One emotional moment came when he attended the third game of the 2001 World Series at Yankee Stadium, seven weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He wore a New York Fire Department sweatshirt, found the plate from the pitcher’s mound and brought thundering chants of “USA, USA” from the crowd of 57,000.
On Monday, he walked to the mound with two injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with John Prazynski, whose son Tyler was killed in action in Afghanistan last May.
The crowd cheered.