Michael Smerconish: When teams play the White House

5.14.09

By Michael Smerconish - Daily News
Philadelphia Daily News

WHEN the Phillies visit the White House tomorrow, they'll meet with a president already fond of hosting these familiar sports grip-and-grins.

President Obama picked North Carolina to win NCAA this year, and thanked the team for "salvaging" his bracket. Last month, he played a quick game of P-I-G with the women's national champs, the UConn Huskies. In February, he hosted his hometown Chicago Bulls when they played the Wizards - despite the Baby Bulls' losing record.

Of course, U.S. presidents haven't always entertained teams with the enthusiasm of the current White House occupant.

Almost 125 years ago, the ballplayers from the 1885 Chicago White Stockings and their manager, Cap Anson, visited President Grover Cleveland at the White House. At one point, Anson invited the president to attend a White Stockings game.

Despite the team's success (the squad had won the National League pennant and played in that era's equivalent of the World Series), Cleveland declined. "What do you imagine the American people would think of me if I wasted my time going to the ball game?" he said.

Today, of course, a president would be branded an elitist for such snootiness.

Now the Phils are poised to etch themselves a small place in that lengthy list of championship-caliber athletes (and some not-so-championship-caliber) who've made their way onto the president's public schedule.

In April 1904, the "Harvard baseball nine," as the New York Times referred to them, paid a visit to the White House. President Theodore Roosevelt kept a group of U.S. senators and representatives waiting in the Cabinet room as he greeted the team. "Yes I know," the president reportedly said, "the anteroom is full of senators and representatives. But they must be taught their place when a Harvard delegation is about."

By the Roaring '20s, presidents were schmoozing with the day's sports stars, according to John Sayle Watterson, a professor of sports history at James Madison University and author of "The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the Presidency." In that era, Watterson told me, President Warren G. Harding hit the links with golf pros Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen. In fact, the president found he liked one of Sarazen's drivers so much he asked to keep it. "What was the poor guy to do? He handed it over," Watterson said.

President Nixon, a third-string lineman in college, took the notion of presidential prerogative to a new level. In 1971, he called Washington Redskins coach George Allen before a playoff game with the San Francisco 49ers to suggest a play. Allen called the end-around at a critical point in the second quarter, resulting in a 13-yard loss. The Redskins fell to the 49ers, 24-20.

Fast-forward to March 1981.

President Reagan remarked that he "might have to be dragged away" from a luncheon with 32 baseball greats at the White House. Indeed, Watter- son reports in his book, Yankee great Joe DiMaggio told baseball historian Bill Mares, "I think the president enjoyed the visit even more than we did."

George W. Bush's White House was a revolving door of athletes, coaches and teams. Bush hosted more than a thousand college athletes and officials just in 2007. The administration even assigned a staffer to follow college and professional sports and arrange the champions' visits to the White House.

Long before the 50-game suspension he's now serving for violating baseball's performance-enhancing drug policy, Manny Ramirez sat out two visits to the White House.

The first, after the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, was accompanied by the excuse that Ramirez's grandmother had died. When the Sox returned to Bush's White House last year in celebration of their 2007 World Series crown, Ramirez was again absent. Bush deadpanned, "I guess his grandmother died again."

WHICH BRINGS us back to the Phils. They have one more game at home today against the Manny-less L.A. Dodgers before heading to Washington. And while Phils' skipper Charlie Manuel told me this week that the team is looking forward to meeting the president, he's ready to move on.

"I think as great as last season was - and believe me, I think it will always linger in my mind and everything, and I'm sure the fans here in Philadelphia will always remember it - but at the same time, we've got this year to play," he said. "And I want us to play just like we did last year. And I want us to get going." *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.