You've got to wonder why the Nationals asked Bush to throw out the first pitch at the new stadium -- it was pretty much inevitable that he'd get booed by a DC crowd. And rightly so, the man deserves to be booed. But the fan's deserve a first pitch thrower who's not so boo-worthy. Couldn't they have gotten Mayor Fenty to open the Nats' season and sent Bush to a minor league game in Utah or some other place where he's still got a good approval rating?
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Opening Day
30 Mar 2008 10:44 pm
Comments (52)
Sometimes you just have to love America.
Bush was there for the military contracter Nationals fans--Northern Virginia matters too!
It was Bush's last chance to ever throw out a baseball, so he went. But I don't get the crudeness. Why would anyone boo a participant in the Special Olympics? People with developmental disabilities have feelings, too.
It was Bush's last chance to ever throw out a baseball, so he went. But I don't get the crudeness. Why would anyone boo a participant in the Special Olympics? People with developmental disabilities have feelings, too.
High and away, the metaphor of his life.
Turns out, Bush got plenty of cheers and jeers, but he didn’t seem fazed.
Bush waved twice quickly as he strode to the mound at Nationals Park. He wasted little time before throwing a pitch high and to the third-base side of the plate to Washington Nationals manager Manny Acta.
Bush acknowledged the crowd one more time by raising his hand as he left the field, again hearing applause and boos.
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Above AP report exerpted from full story on MSNBC.com. I've watched a You Tube video of the walk to the mound and then Bush's exit. I'm going to assume it wasn't altered. The boos seemed to nearly drown out the applause. Yet the AP writes it up to imply some level of equal parts of each, even giving "applause" 1st in the order of crowd reaction. The media are in the tank for this war criminal even with thousands of witnesses to the contrary.
I believe is pretty much assumed the President, unless there are extenuating circumstances, will always throw out the first pitch on Opening Day in D.C.. At least it wasn't Cheney.
Let's not forget his ties to MLB.
Actually, Northern Virginia is very liberal it's the rest of the state you have to worry about. Go Arlington Democrats!
MY is of course right, but I thought that since DC stole Montreal's team it's been the tradition that the Prez throws out the opening pitch? And yes, I realize the only Prez the whole time has been our own baseball-mad dimwit Dubya, but as traditions go it doesn't seem an absurd one to establish.
And look on the bright side, this may be the only crowd of Americans he's faced all year that weren't either hand-picked to support him or bound by their duty not to offend him.
Also, with respect to that egregious "fan's": if you're having trouble, you might consult this useful resource.
It was the Presidential Opener( as in the President will be opening the baseball season in DC every year from now on, aside from those stupid games in Japan)
You cannot very well uninvite him for that reason.
I happened to check out the New York Times, and I noticed that their featured story as I write this comment - the one in the middle up front, with a photograph (though with a headline in a somewhat smaller font than the stories to the left of the photograph) is about opening day in DC.
And it doesn't mention a darn thing about crowd response. Damn our liberal media.
(and I agree: I've seen the youtube, and it seems pretty clear that the booing was quite loud, though not unanimous. Dubya seemed dyspeptic, although that might have been because he was confronting one of the few tasks he takes seriously, i.e. throwing a baseball).
Don't politicians always get booed at sporting events? I thought that was a given...
Upon hearing the boos, he turned to the crowd, threw his hands up in disbelief, and asked, "So?"
Apparently he was going to through the pitch to Lo Duca, but MLB rules state that only one drug user is allowed to partake in the ceremony, and Bush put them at their limit.
They should have invited Gore instead.
Anyway, it was good to see OBP Jesus healthy and playing 1B.
Do people know if it was traditional for the president to throw out the first pitch back in the Senators days? I have a vague sense that it was.
This is going to be fun. It combines sprotz and preznit = the righwing blogosphere pulling out there excellent analytic tools, last used to prove conclusively that no military vehicle was turnin' to run over stray pooches in Baghdad due to precise wheel well measurements that the basement crew had to hand, this time employed to prove positively and forever that there was more cheers than boos. In fact, under the microscope of these Far Side scientists, we will soon learn the truth about the boos being slipped into the soundtrack by the Liberal Press!
Surely Pajamas Media is going to have to jump on this one.
Surely Pajamas Media is going to have to jump on this one.
Confederate Wankee is already running sophisticated spectrum analysis on the crowd noise. The terrorists done blew over his grill, y'know?
I can't wait to see Obama throw out the first pitch next year. Hopefully he can throw a baseball more accurately than he threw that bowling ball.
The Nationals couldn't have picked Mayor Fenty to throw out the first pitch..he opposed the new ballpark when he was on the DC Council..so they went with Bush
Mike, he threw out the first pitch at a White Sox game. I can't find video, but here's an article on his devotion to the team:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/a-principled-sports-fan/
I read somewhere in the sports pages that Bush had to throw out the first pitch to the Nats manager and not catcher Paul LoDuca because LoDuca was named as a steroid user in the Mitchell report. Of course the White House and Nats deny that but I'm pretty sure it's the catcher that catches the honorary first pitch in 99.99% of baseball games I've ever seen in my life.
Steve Duncan and Warren Terra have it exactly backwards. You guys think that a true liberal media would trumpet Bush being booed, because you think that there is nothing wrong with Bush being booed and you can't be bothered to imagine that middle of the road americans would find anything wrong with that either. If you stepped outside your far-left cocoon for a second you'd realize that this not being reported much is doing leftists a huge favor. Everyone already knows that a lot of people disapprove of Bush. The epiphany here for middle of the road americans would be seeing far-leftists acting in such an immature manner.
Go Mets!!
scottynx - BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Scottynx, I'm not suggesting that the headline should be "Bush Throws First Pitch, Booed By Crowd".
But he is a remarkably unpopular President, and a stadium-full of baseball fans, not a grop obviously certain to be dominated by "far-leftists", booed him. You'd think a 700+ word story might mention it in passing.
Maybe it's nust not considered a remarkable event. I disagree; I certainly see it as fairly newsworthy that our President is essentially unable to appearbefore unselected audiences because too few people like him. But in any case, I rather suspect that the story did not avoid mentioning the subject to protect the crowd's reputation. If a reputation was being protected - and I'm not saying one was, as I concede that space or newsworthiness may have been found to be lacking - it would have been Bush's.
And if you think Yglesias or his readers are the far left, you really need to broaden your horizons.
I guess Marcel Duchamp was unavailable. The Nats - the "ready-made" of ballteams.
Don't politicians always get booed at sporting events? I thought that was a given...
Posted by David T
Absolutely!
It's traditional, though I imagine it has even penetrated Bush's Bubble that he is enormously unpopular and it isn't the 2002 Season Opener at Yankee Stadium any more.
Philly boos any politician.
At Dodgers games, where no self-respecting politician goes, they boo celebrities instead.
Attending at Fenway, (God I love that place and the locals!) they HATE John Kerry. I was thrilled by their loathing of that guy, visceral and open, a year after his Presidential campaign imploded. I was told Teddy appears more infrequently, and is booed less, but certain fans make up for it with unison shouts of "Mary Jo! Mary Jo!" that get under Teddy's skin.
Lest I give Fenway locals too much credit, they file in like the dutiful Democrat sheep they are and vote the two bozos back into office time after time..
He didn't throw out any first pitches last year and the obvious speculation at the time was because of the certain booing. Either he or the staff is so stubborn or stupid or both they sent him out there to be humiliated. The guy is a one man losing streak.
Remind me to send an email to bin Laden asking him to drop a plane on Fenway the next time Ford is there.
As an acquaintance once suggested, if we nuked the local college ball park, we'd get rid of most of the morons in town.
Regarding the AP report giving equal time to the auditory hallucinations of the reporter, e.g. "cheers" (that went out to every newspaper in the land): if you Google™ the name of the reporter "Ben Feller" you'll immediately get several links to his track record as a propagandist for this maladministration.
What's so damned sad is that we're not getting any better propaganda (and arguably less artful) than was being force-fed the Soviet population in the bad old days of the Cold War. Worse, at least THEY knew that they were being lied to, and could read between the lines.
We, on the other hand, seem to still operate under the delusion that such stalwarts as the Associated Press AREN'T entirely an arm of a repressive regime.
Silly us.
While "buying" the Texas Rangers, Bush and cronies threw taxpayers a spitball.
http://www.angelfire.com/ok5/pearly/htmls/bush-sec5.html
"Between the sales-tax revenue, state tax exemptions and other financial incentives, Texas taxpayers handed the privately owned Rangers more than $200 million in public subsidies. Taxpayers didn’t get a return from the stadium’s surging new revenues, either. The profits went almost exclusively to the team’s already wealthy owners.
The stadium’s lease is a case in point. Unlike an apartment tenant, the rent that the team’s owners pay is applied toward purchasing the stadium. The maximum yearly rent and maintenence fees for the Rangers are $5 million; the total purchase price for the Ballpark at Arlington is $60 million. Thus, after 12 years the owners will have bought the stadium for less than half of what taxpayers spent on it.
But Bush and his partners weren’t satisfied lining their pockets with average Texans’ hard-earned cash. They wanted land around the stadium to further boost its value. To that end, they orchestrated a land grab that shortchanged local landowners by several million dollars.
As part of the deal, the city created a separate corporation, the Arlington Sports Facilities Development Authority, to manage construction. Using authority granted to it by the city, the ASFDA seized several tracts of land around the stadium site for parking and future development."
- So that is Bush and Republicans idea of the free market.
".....a true liberal media would trumpet Bush being booed, because you think that there is nothing wrong with Bush being booed and you can't be bothered to imagine that middle of the road americans would find anything wrong with that either."
Posted by scottynx | March 31, 2008 3:29 AM
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A valid criticism. Of course you'd have to concede the media have no responsibility to accurately report the totality of an event or issue if that reporting is better hedged to protect the sensitivities of middle class Americans. Myself, I prefer not to be treated like that proverbial 4 year old child society must protect from seeing or hearing every goddamned remotely "too mature" bit of information bandied about by the adult population. scottnyx might be happier living on the set of Sesame Street. No, scotch that last remark, even Sesame Street is capable of dispensing information about life's truths better than most of the nightly news.
Presidents have thrown out the opening pitch since Taft.
Cheney probably told him, "They're not booing you, sir. They're saying 'Boooooo-sh'."
Not always far and away. Sometimes Bush goes tight and inside.
(You know what this one is. So, don't even click it.)
Do people know if it was traditional for the president to throw out the first pitch back in the Senators days? I have a vague sense that it was.
Very definitely, going way back in the history of Nats 1.0 (now the Minnesota Twins) and for most of the brief existence of Nats 2.0 (now the Texas Rangers). [BTW, 'Nats' was a widely used nickname for both Senators teams. Shirley Povich regularly referred to them as Our Wondrous Nats, and the stats box in the WaPo was titled, "Nats' Averages."] So it's not surprising for the tradition to carry over to Nats 3.0.
To steal from Fiddler on the Roof:
The Preznit, the Preznit - TRADITION!
I don't understand why so many fans support their local pro teams. The teams are owned by rich individuals or corporations who can move them at the drop of a hat if some other city offers them more subsidies.
It has happened many times, most famously the Brooklyn Dodgers. You might also wonder why the Los Angeles basketball team is called the Lakers, or why Utah's team is called the Jazz.
The only pro team that I know of that is owned by its fans is the Green Bay Packers. It is the only community team, being owned by thousands of local and regional fans.
And heavily subsidized by the other teams through profit-sharing, mind you.
If you rolled dice before you deployed your apostrophes, you'd probably get a correct hit more often.
Washington teams are now 25-23 in opening games in which the president throws out the first pitch. The first to do so was WH Taft in 1910.
They're saying 'Boooooo-sh'
I was saying Booo-ush.
Was it just me or did the pResident seem more animated after throwing that pitch than he ever has in the last 8 years (barring brush clearing on his ranch when he plays at being a rancher).
Was it just me or did the pResident seem more animated after throwing that pitch than he ever has in the last 8 years (barring brush clearing on his ranch when he plays at being a rancher).
Posted by ET | March 31, 2008 9:39 AM
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Nah, he's at his most animated in a razor blade & mirror store.
Cheney probably told him, "They're not booing you, sir. They're saying 'Boooooo-sh'."
Posted by phil | March 31, 2008 8:28 AM
I knew someone was gonna have said that before me.
Richard Steven Hack 0 Remind me to send an email to bin Laden asking him to drop a plane on Fenway the next time Ford is there.
Remind me that Hack is the same dumb convict asshole who was bragging about how he would "get" bin Laden through his "contacts" if someone would only pay him a billion dollars.
No takers.
Last I heard Hack and some Nigerian prince were working an offer where if you sent 5,000 to an African bank account of the prince via a post office box address - money urgently needed to ship the captured bin Laden back to the USA, they would then bag Binnie and would give you 25% of the 35 million reward money.
White collar criminals like Hack can be quite amusing, because they have a certain feral, twisted intelligence - but invariably show they have a screw loose or a missing neuron mass in some other part of their brain that functions in normal humans.
i had assumed that since it was opening night, with tickets going for quite a sum, that the demographics of those in attendance would be a little abnormal and skew a little more wealthy, meaning Bush would face fewer than expected boos. i guess that wasn't the case.
i went to a July 4th game a couple years ago and Cheney threw out the first pitch. he was booed loudly and repeatedly. the WaPo account described it, similarly to the AP account posted above, as a mix. the online story was corrected later, after a few emails were sent. so the media does listen, i guess.
I don't think it matters that it was a DC crowd. People everywhere would boo him.
Attending at Fenway, (God I love that place and the locals!) they HATE John Kerry. I was thrilled by their loathing of that guy, visceral and open, a year after his Presidential campaign imploded. I was told Teddy appears more infrequently, and is booed less, but certain fans make up for it with unison shouts of "Mary Jo! Mary Jo!" that get under Teddy's skin.
My stepdad claims that the fans at Fenway booed Tip O'Neill in the '80s.
He thinks it's because the rich Republicans were the ones who could afford Opening Day tickets.
But really I think there's a certain mindset up there about booing politicians who show up to promote themselves at these events.
I was saying Boo-urns.
But who was boo'd more at a baseball game? Bush or Cheney?
Check out the comparison:
http://beta.flowgram.com/p/OYBJIRAUIOIOV8
Who knew that Cheney's unfavorable status was even worse than Eliot Spitzer?!?!
Comments closed April 13, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Hey! I go to minor league games in Utah. I don't want him coming out here.
You guys in DC can keep him.
Posted by Steve H. | March 30, 2008 10:51 PM