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Edited by David Leonhardt
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HISTORYSOURCE
Baseballs Role in J.F.K.s Life
MAY 23, 2014
Michael Beschloss
@BeschlossDC
Here a frail 28-year-old John F. Kennedy, still not fully recovered from
injuries sustained in 1943 when his PT-109 was struck by a Japanese
destroyer in World War II, poses at Fenway Park in Boston in April 1946
with Ted Williams and Eddie Pellagrini of the Red Sox and Hank
Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers. The neophyte J.F.K. is about to face nine
opponents in a Democratic congressional primary and he is seeking the
reflected glory of being seen in the proximity of baseball stars.
Touch football games at Hyannis Port were known to be a big
tradition for the Kennedy family, but the national pastime was woven
through J.F.K.'s life, both as genuine baseball fan and as politician.
During the early 1950s, when his injured back allowed, Kennedy, a
right-hander, played softball with fellow senators, including the
Democrats Mike Mansfield of Montana and Henry Jackson of
5/25/2014 Baseballs Role in J.F.K.s Life - NYTimes.com
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Washington. In October 1959, before declaring for president, he courted
the powerful mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, by joining him to watch
the White Sox play the Los Angeles Dodgers during the World Series at
Comiskey Park.
Campaigning in Milwaukee the autumn before the 1960 Wisconsin
presidential primary, the 42-year-old J.F.K. accosted 38-year-old Stan
Musial, who was waiting for the St. Louis Cardinals bus, and said, They
tell me youre too old to play ball and Im too young to be president, but
maybe well fool them. In the fall of 1960, Musial who, though he had
previously backed the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, liked
Kennedy personally and was eager to see a fellow Catholic in the White
House stumped for Kennedy in nine states.
Despite years of trying, Kennedy had no such luck with Williams, a
fellow Bostonian described by his biographer Ben Bradlee Jr. as a big
Nixon man; Williams would lunch with Richard Nixon, the Republican
vice president, when the Red Sox came to Washington. In October 1960,
while landing at the Miami airport to address the American Legion,
Kennedy spied Williams across the tarmac and told his man-of-all-work
David Powers, Dave, look, theres Ted! The son of a bitch is wearing a
Nixon button.
Before making his first pitch as president on opening day at
Washingtons Griffith Stadium in 1961, Kennedy whose 97th birthday
would have been next week practiced throwing a softball in the White
House Rose Garden and was clearly chagrined to encounter a young press
aide, Barbara Gamarekian. Obviously he hadnt intended anyone seeing
him out there, she recalled in a 1964 oral history for the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library, and so he felt sheepish about it all and ducked his
head and said hello.
By the last full day of President Kennedys life, dreams for American
baseball stadium architecture had moved far beyond J.F.K.'s old red-brick
haunt at Fenway. On Thursday afternoon, Nov. 21, 1963, flying into
Houston, the president could see beneath him, out of Air Force Ones
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windows if he looked the rising steel superstructure of a new kind of
baseball park. It was called the Astrodome.
Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, is the author of nine books and a contributor to NBC
News and PBS NewsHour. Follow him on Twitter at @BeschlossDC.
The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us
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A version of this web log appears in print on May 24, 2014, on page D6 of the New York edition
with the headline: Kennedy Mined Baseballs Political Riches.
2014 The New York Times Company