The fascinating history of our presidents as athletes

On an anniversary

One year ago today, my book came out. It was — and is — called “Power Players: Sports, Politics and the American Presidency.”

The elevator pitch for it, which I have made MANY times, goes like this: By learning about the sports our presidents played, loved and watched, we can better understand who they were (and are) and how they governed.

The book was, for me, a labor of love. It combined the two things I have followed passionately for the entirety of my adult life. I began the book during the pandemic and it came out just months after I had been laid off by CNN. Writing and reporting it helped me through some of the very dark times.

The book was also the precursor — or one of the precursors — for this newsletter. Because as I wrote it, I realized that there was SO much history I either didn’t know or I had totally forgotten. And I am not talking about stuff from the 1800s! I only went back as far as Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency in the book but so much of the stuff I found was totally new to me.

Which made me think that a newsletter that aims to remind people of the history of our major (and minor) sports might really work!

Speaking of which, I need your support to MAKE “The Replay” work! It’s just $5 a month (or $50 for the year) to become a paid subscriber. Join us today!

On the one-year anniversary of the book, I wanted to share with you a few of the questions I get asked most about it.

The most commonly-asked question is, of course, which president was the best athlete?

And the answer is easy. Gerald Ford played big-time college football at the University of Michigan — he was an offensive lineman — and even had offers from two NFL teams to sign with them. He declined — and went to law school. (The pay for professional football players back then wasn’t what it is today!)

Ford was also a very gifted skier and almost singlehandedly put Vail on the map as a skiing destination. Ford and his wife, Betty, bought a place in Vail in the 1970s and lived there following his presidency. (The house went on the market in 2022 for more than $13 million.)

It’s ironic that most people think of Ford as a bumbling doofus. He was FAR from it — although he did STINK at golf — but the lampooning he took from Chevy Chase on “Saturday Night Live” did a number on how the president is remembered in the culture.

The only president who came even close to Ford as an athlete was George H.W. Bush. The elder Bush was a lefty hitting first baseman — and the captain of the Yale baseball team.

In that role, Bush actually met Babe Ruth in person — just months before the Bambino passed away in August 1948. Ruth was donating his memoirs to Yale and Bush formally accepted them as captain of the baseball team.

“I am here to present the original manuscript of ‘The Babe Ruth Story’ to Captain Bush of Yale,” Ruth said, standing on the Yale baseball diamond. “It has lots of fun and a lot of laughs and a lot of crying, too.”

As Bush recounted of the event: “He kind of croaked when they set up the mic by the pitcher’s mound. It was tragic. He was hollow. His whole great shape was gaunt and hollowed out. I remember he complimented the Yale ball field. It was like a putting green, it was so beautiful.”

There’s even a photo that captures that historic meet-up.

Bush was never seriously considered as a prospect for the majors but he did play in the Old Timers Games (yes, they used to have those) in 1984. Wearing a Denver Bears uniform, he slapped a single into the outfield off of former MLB hurler Milt Pappas and, while playing first base, snagged a hot shot off the bat of Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda. He was greeted with cheers from the Colorado crowd as he left the field.

The second most common question I get asked about the book is who was the WORST athlete among our modern presidents.

To be honest, there’s a fair number of people to choose from. Lyndon Johnson didn’t care about sports and never really played them. Bill Clinton was an indifferent — at best — athlete although he did claim he once dunked in a Catholic league basketball game. (I think he probably made it up.)

But, I think the “honor” of worst athlete in the White House goes to Richard Nixon.

Which you might not think if you just casually glanced at Nixon’s resume and saw that he was, in fact, on the Whittier College (Ca.) football team.

Dig a bit deeper though — and I did — and you see that Nixon’s presence on the team was part and parcel of his broader life story: He was knocked around over and over again and just kept getting up.

“He was willing to pay the price,” Nixon historian Evan Thomas told me, noting that his teammates would “beat the living shit out of him” on the gridiron.

Nixon was, really, a tackling dummy. He was cannon fodder for the better players to tee off on. And he knew it. But, he was also learning — resilience, team work, what it took to motivate people.

“It’s good for people to be for somebody, for a team,” he later said. “You can learn something about losing as well as winning — I’ve had some experience with that.”

And here’s something totally fascinating: While Nixon was a terrible athlete, he was a MASSIVE sports fan.

He loved baseball. Like, a lot. At a June 1973 press conference, a reporter off-handedly asked Nixon to name his favorite baseball players. The president quickly named five: Ted Williams, with whom he was close personal friends, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial.

The reporter, intrigued, asked Nixon if he would name his “all-time baseball team.” Nixon did that — and much, much more. Huddled at Camp David with his son-in-law David Eisenhower on a rainy afternoon, Nixon pored over stats and compared players.

What he produced was remarkable: Not one all-time team but four. An American and National League club from 1925-1945 (the early years of Nixon’s fandom) and the same for the years 1945-1970.

And Nixon didn’t just have a starting nine! He listed two catchers, five pitchers and backup infielders and outfielders!

“Nixon’s mind collected data in the way that later generations would engage in rotisserie baseball,” historian Tim Naftali has said. “This was natural to him. Whether it was learning statistics of his favorite ballplayer’s, or figuring out who might become secretary of state of some part of the Midwest, that’s how his mind worked.”

That’s the big lesson I learned in writing the book: How these guys thought about — and played — sports was hugely predictive of how they governed.

As president, Jimmy Carter wanted to approve who got to use the White House tennis court. Talk about being focused on the wrong things!

George W. Bush worshipped his dad — in sports and everything else — and spent his entire life trying to live up to him. (Fun fact: The elder Bush managed his son’s Little League team!)

Barack Obama’s long search for community ended when he started playing basketball seriously.

On and on it went: Who these guys were as athletes was directly tied to who they were as presidents (and people).

If history — of sports and/or politics — is your thing, I think you would really dig the book. It’s a breezy read (330 pages or so) and is filled with fun stories. (Did you know that George H.W. Bush claims to have invented the phrase “You Da Man!”??)

You can check it out here. And thanks for your support — for this newsletter and in general.