WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump couldn't stand to cede the spotlight in 2020 as the Washington Nationals opened their pandemic-shortened season at home against the New York Yankees by having Dr. Anthony Fauci throw the first pitch.
″I think I’m doing that on Aug. 15 at Yankee Stadium,” the president said shortly before Fauci took the mound.
He never made it to the Bronx that year, later saying he needed to stay at the White House to manage the pandemic. But eight months into his second term, Trump rarely shies away from ensuring he remains at the forefront of American sports and cultural life. He frequently turns to high-wattage athletic events to ensure his presence is felt far beyond the traditional realm of the presidency.
In September alone, Trump has at least three New York-area sporting events on his calendar.
He watched Carlos Alcaraz win the U.S. Open on Sunday and returns to the city Thursday when the Yankees host the Detroit Tigers on the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The president also plans to attend the opening round of the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black on Long Island this month, and has encouraged U.S. captain Keegan Bradley to play.
“He’s much more present, verbal and opinionated when it comes to sport than any president before him,” said David Andrews, a University of Maryland professor and author of “Making Sport Great Again." ”Being at a major sporting event does bring with it heightened visibility, and it allows people to clip you on social media.”
Sports have long helped define who Trump is
Sports were central to Trump’s public persona decades before he entered politics. He once owned the USFL's New Jersey Generals and bid unsuccessfully to buy the New York Mets. While he’s not expected to throw the first pitch on Thursday, he has done so previously, including at a 2000 game in Wrigley Field and six years later at Fenway Park.
The Yankees game will be Trump's eighth major sporting event in as many months since returning to the White House in January. He attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans, the Daytona 500, UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia, the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and the U.S. Open men's final.
All of that doesn't count all the weekends he spent golfing at his courses in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia, as well as a swing to inaugurate a new Trump course in Scotland.
The appearances can sometimes take turns that most presidents would try to avoid. Trump was booed at the U.S. Open and the Club World Cup final. And he often pounces on off-field issues where he thinks he might have impact — pushing for the late Pete Rose to be inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame and calling for the Cleveland Guardians and Washington Commanders to go back to their old team nicknames.
The president has also held many White House events promoting the U.S. co-hosting the World Cup next year — even though he was not much of a soccer fan before — and is paying close attention to preparations for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Sometimes sports and political diplomacy have collided. Trying to defuse a contentious Oval Office meeting with Trump in May, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa brought two golf stars from his country, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen.
“They’re champions,” Trump said then. “I respect champions.”
Though he was long a Yankees fan and close to the team’s longtime late owner, George Steinbrenner, Trump has lately kept his preferences to himself and been more willing to soak up the spectacle of big events rather than rooting as a fan.
Asked if Trump is still Yankee fan or if the spectacle of major sporting events is more important than his personal rooting interests, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said only that Trump “will return to his home state” to attend the game. On a similar subject, however, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “is a New Yorker at heart. He loves the city very much.” That's despite the fact Trump changed his primary residence to Florida in 2019.
Baseball and presidents
The national pastime's presidential connections go well beyond Trump.
Abraham Lincoln liked to watch the games on a diamond just south of the White House. Richard Nixon compiled an exhaustive, all-star dream teams list spanning several leagues and eras that made national headlines. Ronald Reagan, who was once a baseball announcer, watched a 1988 game from the Chicago Cubs dugout.
On April 14, 1910, William Howard Taft hurled a ball from the stands to begin the custom of presidents throwing out first pitches when baseball teams open their seasons in Washington. George W. Bush tossed the first pitch as the Yankees played the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2001 World Series, a moment that came to symbolize national resilience after the Sept. 11 attacks weeks earlier.
Barack Obama was the last president to throw the first pitch, in 2010. Joe Biden did not, and neither did Trump in his first term.
The exaggerations that are now familiar in Trump's political life are also found in his sports obsession, though.
“I was supposed to be a pro baseball player,” he once wrote. By Trump's account, in Brian Kilmeade's 2005 book “The Games Do Count," “I was still thinking in high school that I had a shot at the major leagues until I attended a tryout with another young kid named Willie McCovey. I watched him hit the ball, and I said I really believe I will enjoy the real estate business for my entire life.”
Except that couldn’t have happened the way Trump recalls. McCovey’s Hall of Fame career did famously feature a tryout for the New York Giants in Florida, but that was in 1955 — when Trump wasn't yet 10.
Curt Smith, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and author of “The Presidents and the Pastime," wrote about Trump's high school baseball career at New York Military Academy and noted, “A lot of the characteristics we of course recognize today were born back then.”
Smith said teammates remembered Trump as a strong enough right-handed pull hitter that opposing teams would set their defenses to the left side of the diamond. Instead of hitting to the gap on the right, Trump would hit to the defenders on the left because he "wanted to overpower them.”
“He was a real gamer," Smith said. “He loved to win.”