Swinging for the fences, too.

But what if Obama were white?

Opening Day is upon us. Our new president’s first ceremonial pitch, whenever and wherever it may come, will be the most important pitch in the history of America. So regardless of whether he ultimately takes the mound for the Nationals or White Sox or others, it is especially important for President Obama to continue the first pitch tradition.
Other pitches have made history, of course, like the one Ralph Branca served up to Bobby Thompson to lose the 1951 National League pennant, or the first pitch ever thrown by an African American, Satchel Paige, in a World Series game. When rogue Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck signed Paige, then pushing 50 years old, in 1948, The Sporting News was offended. “A publicity stunt,” it said, arguing that had Satchel not been black Veeck never would have signed such an aging figure. Veeck blasted back, “Had Satchel been white, he would have been in the majors 25 years ago.”
Sports are a front page reflection of contemporary society, often pulling America in new directions, indeed influencing who we are as a nation. Baseball racism was a blemish on America’s game from the time Moses Fleetwood Walker was frozen out of the majors in 1884 until Jackie Robinson changed baseball and America on April 15, 1947. The game’s overt racism in those pre-Robinson days is legendary, but in truth it merely mimicked what much of the country already felt.
Timing is crucial. Had John F. Kennedy been African-American, he certainly would not have made it to the White House when he did—after all, he almost was defeated for being Catholic. It was lucky that Kennedy was not black at the wrong time, just as it is lucky today that Barack Obama is African-American just at the right time—all harkening a vivid point about baseball and life first made my Robinson’s mentor Branch Rickey: “Luck is the residue of design.” White or black, President Obama clearly put himself in a position to succeed by taking advantage of whatever luck—and social change—may have come his way in the new Millennium. That is not just baseball, that is America.
Whenever Mr. Obama takes his gritty springtime walk to the mound as president, he will blaze a new trail, ironically, by following in the footsteps of others—and not just those of Satchel Paige. Baseball and the presidency have been joined at the hip ever since the rotund William Howard Taft, a huge baseball fan in every sense of the word, invented the ceremonial first pitch in 1910. Dwight Eisenhower, two-term president and leader of the D-Day invasion of 1944, lamented that he never made it as a big league baseball player like his hero Honus Wagner. After a stint in an old-timer’s game, Ronald Reagan gleefully observed, “This is really more fun than being president,” and Richard Nixon once asked a team of working astronauts if they wanted to hear how the All-Star game turned out. Eventually George W. Bush made the literal connection, having once actually owned the Texas Rangers ballclub.
President Obama’s first pitch will become the latest in a succession of great steps beginning when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Obama’s own personal hero in 1863, although the ensuing march to freedom would also take many steps backward, like when baseball’s first independent commissioner Kenesaw Landis perpetuated big league racism until his death in 1944.
Barack Obama already knows how to play political hardball. In so doing, he found himself on an even bigger stage—history—where now this first pitch by an African-American president will all but close a symbolic yet very significant loop. Posterity will judge President Obama on how he tackles the compelling issues of our times, like coaxing an economically wounded America to once again swing for the fences. Yes, he has already made it to the history books, but if he can park one in the seats on at least some of our greatest challenges, it will emphatically define our new president’s place in human history.
But first he has to get that first pitch over the plate. Why? Because baseball, with its chip-on-the-shoulder personality and anything-goes irreverence, symbolizes the home run swagger of America. As the game of our parents, grandparents, and generations of immigrants, baseball, more than any other sport, simply is America.
Batter up, Mr. Obama.