Has the POTUS Thrown His Last First Pitch?

We are hours away from Americans kicking political ads and the mind-numbing rhetoric in the teeth and trekking to the polls and to make a collective decision on who is going to be president of United States for the next four years.

Man, I'm excited!

Upon thinking about the election and how, if in any way, it relates to baseball, I realized… hey, Barack Obama may have tossed out his last first pitch as  president. You know, the ceremonial pitch at a Major League Baseball game.

What's that? Yeah, you're right. 

That's the last thing voters need to be concerned about. But let’s think about it for a second. Tossing out a ceremonial first pitch goes back to President William Howard Taft doing the honors from the front row on Opening Day in Washington way back in 1910. Wow, that's 102 years ago.

Since, without going into a long history of presidential first pitches, let's just realize it's a pretty long and substantial tradition here.

During his nearly four years in office, President Obama has thrown only a couple of first pitches at Major League Baseball games.

The first came at the 2009 MLB All-Star Game at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The president, decked out in a Chicago White Sox jacket – I like how he stayed true to his American League roots in a National League ballpark (whatever!) – tossed a pretty solid pitch. The video angle isn't great, but the ball looks to go right over the plate and close to the strike zone.

 

Nice pitch, Prez!

That said, President Obama's second appearance on the mound less a year later was, spinfully speaking, not so spectacular on the 100th anniversary of the first Presidential Opening Day ceremonial first pitch. In fact, the pitch was dreadful, particularly considering all the touts of Obama's athletic prowess.

Let's go to the video tape.

Warning: You may want to ask the children to leave the room. This is difficult to watch. 

See what I mean?

Wearing a White Sox cap – again, I have to commend the president for sticking with his team – the lefty, or course, conjures images of Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn with high and outside delivery to the Nationals' Ryan Zimmerman.

So, now I bet you're saying, "Wow, I'd like know what the president thinks about tossing out the ceremonial first pitch."

You're in luck. I'm – ok, Bill Simmons is – way ahead of you.

What's interesting to me in this video is President Obama saying 1.) throwing out the first pitch is one of most stressful things he's ever done (Really?) and 2.) describing the difficulties of throwing a baseball while wearing a bulky bullet-proof vest.

Take a look…

So, now that we've examined President Obama, how about the challenger to his mound, I mean, office, Mitt Romney?

Can he throw some heat, ala George W. Bush after 911? Is he more of a loft-it-in-there kid of guy? What's he got off the mound? Does he even throw ceremonial first pitches from the rubber or does he stand in front of the mound? We see that a lot and, to me, it's not very presidential. Just ask Derek Jeter.

I went to the Internet, looking around on YouTube, trying to get answers to these questions, just in case, you know, we have POTUS Romney, let's say, tossing out the first pitch on Opening Day in Washington in 2013.  

What did I find? Nothing!

Nothing at all.

I'm sure, during all of his political years, Romney has been invited to throw a ceremonial first pitch, but I have yet to find any video or news article evidence.

However, I did find this photo of Romney buttoning up a Red Sox jersey while reportedly standing in a New York hotel. Strike one!

And then there's this…

Now that you're armed with the most trivial of all the information regarding the presidential election, get out and vote. And while you're in the booth, please don't make your decision based on any of the nonsense written above.