Grant & Baseball

That broader context is a big story. Another way to look at the story of Grant and baseball is to consider the 18th president’s personal experiences with the game, and those of some people around him.

Grant had encountered baseball for years before enjoying the Polo Grounds match on that day in 1883. He quite possibly played as a young man, and almost certainly saw his troops playing the game during the Civil War. Grant biographers Geoffrey Perret and Jean Edward Smith noted that President Grant would take afternoon walks around Washington, D.C., and often happen upon pickup baseball games. Perret wrote that the president would occasionally take a swing of the bat and “test the pitching.” It is likely that Grant’s son Jesse was occasionally one of the players.

Grant appears here in a photo circa 1882. As president from 1869-1877, Grant would occasionally take a swing of the bat in sandlot games he happened upon in his walks around Washington, D.C. His son, Jesse, was probably one of the players from time to time.

Jesse, writing in his memoirs decades later, recalled playing baseball on the grounds just to the south of the Executive Mansion (the era’s name for the White House), near the Washington Monument. He and his friends called their team “the Potomac Base Ball Club,” and idolized pitcher Billy Williams and outfielder and utility infielder Davy Force. Jesse also wrote that from his gang of half-pint baseball players grew a club of friends called the Kick, Fight, and Run Society that stayed in touch and held reunions for decades.
Another important person in Grant’s life, his friend and the publisher of his Personal Memoirs, Samuel Clemens, was a baseball fan who wrote about the sport, and even umpired a local game at least once.

<<	Grant & Baseball	>>
Personal Encounters	President Grant and the Sport	The Original Polo Grounds
Personalities	Grant at the Game	Selected Bibliography
	Home