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Happy Presidents’ Day!
Let’s Recall President Eisenhower’s “Baseball Secret!”
“When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a riverbank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a major-league baseball player. My friend said that he’d like to be President of the United States…Neither of us got our wish!”
-Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States
And the Free World is forever grateful!
Dwight Eisenhower had a life-long love for baseball. Born in 1890 and growing up in a relatively poor family, Eisenhower, as a small boy, often declared his ambition to one day be a baseball player “like Honus Wagner.” Later, at West Point, Eisenhower tried out for the baseball team but didn’t make it. He was later quoted as saying, “Not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest.”
What seemed like a stinging personal disappointment to the young plebe Dwight Eisenhower may have been, in retrospect, good fortune for the Free World. Read on…
The tradition of United States presidents throwing out the first ball of the season in Washington had started with President Taft, and I think we can safely say, Ike wasn’t timid about taking his turn. In the featured photo, Ike prepares to toss the first pitch on Opening Day, April 13, 1954. Looking on are Nationals’ owner Clark Griffith, Bucky Harris, Casey Stengel, and a spiffy-looking future president on the left, Lyndon Johnson. I don’t think President Eisenhower missed an Opening Day “assignment” during his entire tenure in the White House.
Ike’s Secret
Ike once revealed an incident from his youth that can only be described as a deception. Under the most draconian interpretation, it could conceivably have gotten him disqualified for enrollment at West Point or even expelled. Before entering West Point, by his own admission, he evidently played baseball for money. He disguised himself behind the pseudonym “Wilson” to avoid jeopardizing his amateur standing which was essential in playing college football and baseball.
Playing under a pseudonym was not unknown in those times, but it would have opened young Eisenhower to the charge that, at least technically, he had deceived West Point and its vaunted honor code. And continuing to play on a varsity team would have increased his risk of exposure and possible expulsion. His glorious military and political careers may never have happened.
Once, after World War II had ended, Giants’ manager Mel Ott asked Gen. Eisenhower whether it was true that he had played semiprofessional ball. Basking in the crowd’s adoration that day, his guard probably down, Eisenhower replied within reporters’ earshot that he indeed had played for money “under the assumed name of Wilson.”
The Eisenhower Library houses a 1961 notation by his devoted longtime secretary, Ann Whitman that “DDE did play professional baseball one season to make money,” and that he made “one trip under an assumed name.” Another note sets down the ex-president’s private order that “inquiries should not be answered concerning his participation in professional baseball — as it would necessarily become too complicated.”
I guess we can all be thankful that Cadet Dwight Eisenhower didn’t make the West Point varsity baseball team, which may have expelled him from West Point!
-Gary Livacari
Photo Credits: “Nationals On Parade,” by Mark Stang; and public domain
Information: Excerpts edited from the article, “Eisenhower’s Baseball Secret,” by Michael Beschloss http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/upshot/eisenhowers-baseball-secret.html?abt=0002&abg=0
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