Obama’s opener — what was he thinking?

It wasn’t the pitch that produced the audible boos — emerging from the
dugout in a red Nats jacket, Obama was mostly cheered; it was, as he reached
the pitcher’s mound, his pulling out of his Nats jacket pocket a Chicago White
Sox cap and looking delighted with himself as he put it on his head (no cutouts
for the antennae).

Sox fans would appreciate it — not me, I’m a Cubs fan — but it seemed
provocative and disrespectful to the Nats and their fans — and came off as
cocky.  Millions who might have
little interest in baseball and even less in the sad-sack Nationals will watch
the video of Obama throwing out the first pitch, as presidents since William
Howard Taft have done before him (Obama’s effort had extra significance, as it
marked the 100th year of presidential pitches.)

The Nats went on to lose to the Phillies by the humiliating score of 11-1; the
White Sox, with Mayor Daley and his grandson in attendance, decisively (6-0)
won their home opener. For Sox fans it couldn’t get any better than the president
showing their colors and the Cubs losing their opener decisively (16-5).

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank
noted that Obama stayed at the Nats-Phillies game only an hour, “returning to
the White House a few minutes after 2 p.m.  —  by total coincidence, the exact start time for the
live broadcast of the White Sox season opener.”

Imagine how much fun it would have been had Hillary Clinton won that 2008
presidential primary and we could have watched the first female president
— a woman noted for being particularly unathletic —  carry on this
all-American tradition. One thing for certain: She wouldn’t have donned a Cubs
hat. The native Chicagoan was supposedly a Cubs fan until she wasn’t, when she
became a Yankees fan while running for the Senate from New York.