Speaking from the podium in the White House meeting room, Trump said team president Randy Levine “asked me to throw the first pitch” at Yankee Stadium. Trump said he accepted the offer and asked Levine, “What will the crowd be like?”
“You don’t have a crowd,” said the president. “There’s no such thing.”
Until now, Trump has been the only modern president who hasn’t thrown a first pitch in a major league game while in office, breaking with a tradition that dates back to 1910.
Taft’s opening day launch kicked off an early-season tradition that spanned more than a century. While presidents in the 1920s and 1930s often threw the first pitch before World Series games, a president who took control during the Fall Classic has been much rarer in recent memory.
There was talk that Trump released the first launch in last year’s World Series game, but he rejected the idea and said he would have to wear “a lot of heavy armor” to make that appearance.
“I will look very heavy. I don’t like that,” he said at the time.
Still, Trump’s hesitation is not due to an inability to pass the ball over the plate.
According to a series of stories from his childhood and days at the New York Military Academy, Trump was an outstanding baseball player whose solid arm, power at the plate, and long frame made him a first base model.
Colonel Ted Dobias, who was Trump’s baseball coach, said the young Trump was a “good shot and good field” that in his final year was explored by the Philadelphia Phillies.
Trump, who never shied away from bragging about his abilities, boasted of author Michael D’Antonio, who wrote a book about Trump, who was “New York’s best baseball player when he was young.”
CNN’s Kyle Feldscher, Dan Merica, Alicia Lee and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
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