By Jefferson Flanders
President Barack Obama’s awkward ceremonial first pitch at the 2009 All Star baseball game last night was saved from bouncing in the dirt by Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols.
It was a shaky toss (Obama, known for his talent on the basketball court, admitted to the Fox Sports: “I did not play organized baseball when I was a kid and so, you know, I think some of these natural moves aren’t so natural to me”) but you wouldn’t have known that from many of the media accounts.
“Barack Obama’s first pitch is a success” was the headline for Carol E. Lee’s piece in Politico, although her lead did admit: “It was low, and didn’t quite reach home plate.” Jack Curry’s New York Times blog post (”Obama to Pujols, Without a Bounce“) and ESPN.com’s coverage (”Obama gets first pitch to home plate“) reflected the generally positive spin in the mainstream media. You would have to turn to Fox News or, surprisingly, to the left-of-center British newspaper, the Guardian ( “Obama’s first pitch as president falls flat“) for a more clear-eyed account.
White House aides were apparently worried about the symbolic nature of Obama’s performance. They had to be happy with the sympathetic media’s pro-Obama spin. Of course it didn’t really matter—so what if Obama looked uncomfortable throwing? President George H.W. Bush bounced a first pitch at an All-Star game, as did former Vice President Dick Cheney at the opening of the Washington National’s home season in 2006. And George W. Bush demonstrated he could reach the plate, as he did at the 2001 World Series. In short, whether a politician’s throw reaches home plate or not shouldn’t be a symbol of anything (certainly not “manliness” or leadership). The losers in this silly episode: any journalist who bought into applauding Obama’s magical first pitch.
(Ted Guthrie, general manager of the minor league Charlotte Rangers, gave me this priceless tip for ceremonial first pitch throwing back in the mid-1990s: throw the ball high, aiming for a spot several feet over the catcher’s head. This would compensate for the tendency to short-arm the ball, and the difficulty in gauging the distance from the pitching mound. It worked!)
Copyright © 2009 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved
Reprinted from Neither Red nor Blue
(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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4 users commented in " President Obama’s magical first pitch "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI like your point “In short, whether a politician’s throw reaches home plate or not shouldn’t be a symbol of anything (certainly not “manliness” or leadership”. It’s insightful.
Regardless, I direct you to Jon Stewart’s mocking of the Fox News coverage of the pitch.
“If you’re just going to make shit up about what happened, maybe you shouldn’t do it while the videotape that contradicts you is playing.”
Saying that Fox News has a clear-eye account of the pitch is about as truthful as the liberal media spin heralding the “success” of the pitche.
“In short, whether a politician’s throw reaches home plate or not shouldn’t be a symbol of anything (certainly not “manliness” or leadership”.
And yet, you wrote a blog post on the meaningless subject.
Mr. Smith,
Jon Stewart took issue with a Fox News morning show “personality” saying that Pujols “dug the throw out of the dirt.” The Fox News link I cite noted: “The results are in: President Obama apparently did not clear the plate in his ceremonial first pitch at the MLB All-Star game in St. Louis Tuesday night. The ball fell just short of the 60-foot threshold, according to a reporter on the scene.”
The reality is that Pujols had to move well in front of the plate to catch the ball before it hit the ground…
Mr. Tipple,
Yes, I wrote a blog post because the American mainstream media coverage of President Obama’s first pitch reflects the desire of some journalists to cast Obama in the best light possible.
The concern is that it is first pitches today, and substantive policy matters today.
If you can’t trust journalists to report the small things accurately, what about the big things?
Jefferson
That should be:
The concern is that it is first pitches today, and substantive policy matters tomorrow.
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