As memorable a gathering as I ever attended was the White House reception for baseball people hosted by then President Nixon at the time of the 1969 All Star Game in Washington. One of the most striking aspects of the gathering, one which I glossed over in the column, was Nixon's feat of recalling the happenings in the 1929 World Series when the Philadelphia Athletics staged the memorable rally that overcame the Chicago Cubs. Nixon said he was a law student at Duke at the time, that he listened to the game on the radio. He said the rally made such a great impression on him that he could remember it to this day. He then recited a batter-by-batter description of the 10-run rally. It was an astounding performance that dazzled the old ball players on hand. I was somewhat suspicious about it at the time. I could imagine a fan recalling the rally, but not be able to give play-by-play of every detail. It was later that I learned that his son-in-law, David Eisenhower, had contacted San Diego columnist Jack Murphy before the gathering and gotten the exact details of it all so that Nixon could recite it to the baseball people. July 23: Some Old Heroes Meet a Baseball Fan Washington -- Back in the early 1930s, when conditions in the land were making things ripe for a song like, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" it occurred to some armchair economists that there was irony in the fact that Babe Ruth, baseball hero, was earning more money--$80,000 per year--than Herbert Hoover, the President. Ruth is supposed to have retorted, "And why not? I had a better year than he did." Ruth's salad days as the colossus of ball players came during the presidential administrations of Warren Gamaliel Harding, Calvin Coolige and Hoover. Now, Ruth has just been named by an official baseball poll as the greatest ball player ever, and his name is still as vibrant as ever. The passing of the years has done something less for the three Presidents. Is it sacrilegious then to suggest that Babe Ruth, athlele, stands as a more significant figure of his time than any of those three less-than-exalted Presidents?
Yesterday afternoon in the East Room of the White House, where the high and mighty of near and far had met with American Presidents, Richard Nixon was host at a reception for baseball people--players, ex-players, officials and press. In that room with Nixon were Casey Stengel, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Carl Hubbell, John Galbraith, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax and Henry Aaron. And, as the saying goes, many, many more. For sports page devotees, it was a knockout of a gathering, though not quite enough to wake up the echoes of another time in the White House when President Kennedy hosted a large dinner party of intellectals and said, "This is the greatest gathering of intellects to eat in the White House since one evening when Thomas Jefferson sat down to dine by himself." There was a time when the reputations of many of these baseball celebrities meant a whole lot more than the name of Richard Milhous Nixon, a scrubbini who sat on the bench for three years on the Whittier College football squad. So Nixon's greeting to the assemblage was, "Like so many who never made the team I am awed at those who have made the team." Nixon, who takes pride in being the most knowlegeable sports fan ever to occupy the White House, delayed his trip abroad so that he could see the All-Star Game; it later was washed away by rain. He said, "They told me I could leave in the fifth inning, but I never leave in the middle of the game." He harked back to the 1929 World Series when the Philadelphia Athletics came up with 10 runs in the eighth inning to beat the Chicago Cubs as proof that the game is "never over until the last out." He said, "I think the date was Oct. 12."
He recalled Charley Root because Root pitched in Los Angeles on his way to the big leagues. And he added to a myth: talking about Ruth calling his home run shot by pointing to the bleachers before hitting the ball there off Root in the 1932 World Series. Root insists it never happened, and most baseball people at the scene were inclined to believe that Ruth was only gesturing to the bench jockeys on the Cubs that he had one strike remaining. Nixon said, "To prove that I am a baseball fan, I've always been for the Senators,and you've got to be a baseball fan to be for the Senators." When he was given a lifetime National League pass, he said, "The way the dollar is going, I'd better keep this pass." He showed a proper respect for that eminent banker, Mr. Charles Dillon Stengel, asking Stengel if his bank was safe. Stangel said, "It's doing just fine." "What about the interest rates?" "If you can't make money in that kind of business now, you should get out of it," Stengel answered. Vice President Spiro Agnew stood among the visitors, wearing a dark green suit and the shiniest black shoes in the room. While Agnew stood with Brooks Robinson, the Baltimore star he had come to admire when he was governor of Maryland, an old ball player came over to shake the vice president's hand and say what a privilege it was to meet him. "That's Frankie Frisch," Robinson whispered to Agnew. Baseball personalities who usually are so cool in public they can freeze people in their tracks, turned goo-goo-eyed in the face of the audience with the President. The 400 or so guests waited patiently in line, gave their names to a White House aide, who passed them on to baseball commissioneer Bowie Kuhn, who introduced each guest by name to the President. The basball celebrities were dazzled by his awareness of them. Nixon gave equal time to the press, noting that some of the great political columnists started out as sports columnists. He said, "And I don't know if that's going up or down. I think If I had to live my life over again, I'd like to be a sports writer." When Maury Allen of the New York Post shook Nixon's hand, he said, "Mr. President, I'd like to exchange jobs with you, but I can't afford the pay cut." Nixon beamed and said, "That's funny."
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11. Political Baseball 
