The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House Audiobook (Free)

The Presidents as well as the Pastime draws on Curt Smith’s extensive background like a former White colored House presidential speechwriter to chronicle the historic relationship between baseball, the ‘most American’ sport, as well as the U.S. presidency.

Smith, who USA Today calls ‘America’s voice of authority on baseball broadcasting,’ begins before America’s birth, when would be presidents played baseball antecedents. He graphs how football cemented its status as America’s pastime in the nineteenth century, about The Presidents as well as the Pastime: THE ANNALS of Baseball as well as the Light House such presidents as Lincoln and Johnson playing town ball or providing employees period off to watch. Smith paths every U.S. chief executive from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, each section filled with anecdotes: Wilson buoyed by baseball after suffering impairment; a heroic FDR conserving baseball in World War II; Carter, trained the overall game by his mom, Lillian; Reagan, airing baseball on radio that he hardly ever saw by ‘re-creation.’

George H. W. Bush, for whom Smith published, explains, ‘Football offers everything.’ Smith, having interviewed most presidents since Richard Nixon, shares personal stories on each. Throughout, The Presidents and the Pastime provides a riveting narrative of how America’s market leaders have treated baseball. From Taft as the first president to toss the ‘initial pitch’ on Opening Day in 1910 to Obama’s ‘Move Sox!’ scrawled in the visitor register in the Country wide Football Hall of Fame in 2014, our presidents possess considered it the quintessentially American sport, enriching both their office and the nation.