DanMargarita.com

In March, the President invited some forty retired ballplayers, the heroes of his youth, to the White House where he gleefully hobnobbed with the Hall of Fame legends.

By contrast, Bill Clinton over the years consistently used public office as a means to meet women. For all the hits that Clinton took on the morality issue, to me that one seems a little less unsettling than the idea of the most powerful man in the world chasing Yogi Berra to get an autograph.

While President, Bush’s father presented visiting British Prime Minister John Major with an autographed baseball bat and it’s not hard to imagine the younger Bush trying to impress some emir with his Mickey Mantle Topps baseball card collection.

I have a mental picture of Bush’s bedroom or even the Oval Office being decorated with pennants and Derek Jeter posters in some sort of modern day Beaver Clever fashion. I suppose that Dick Cheney has already informed him that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) wasn’t set up specifically so that Bush could trade three Carl Yastrzemski cards for two Hank Aaron’s, and that you can’t put baseball cards in the spokes of Air Force One.

One of the most fabled stories in sports is that of Babe Ruth visiting the bedside of a gravely ill youngster and promising to hit him a home run in return for the kid’s healthy recovery. I fear that Bush may try to emulate the Babe and attempt to mollify some ill youngster. Let’s go now to the bedside of young Johnny Sylvester, III.

Bush
Hi Johnny. You know who I am?

Johnny
Gosh, you’re the president.

Bush
That’s right Johnny. I hear you’re pretty sick. You got a radio, Johnny?

Johnny
Sure. It’s a swell radio.

Bush
Tomorrow, I want you to listen to that radio, Johnny. I’m gonna bomb some third world nation. When I do, it’ll be for you, Johnny. You’ve got to promise me that when those bombs fall, you’ll get better. Is it a deal?

Johnny
Sure, Mr. President.

One of Bush’s campaign ideas was to allow individuals to invest their Social Security money, which sounded like a good idea to some while last year’s high-tech driven economy was still red-hot. Now that the economy has cooled off, Bush may advise people that they should invest in more traditional and stable commodities like, Nolan Ryan ‘rookie’ cards.

This past Sunday Bush was joined by Red Sox star Nomar Garciaparra in beginning a monthly tradition of playing T-ball games on the White House lawn. Bush admitted that he “peaked” in Little League and after seeing his lame attempt to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the opening of Milwaukee’s new Miller Park, I suspect that he didn’t get a lot of playing time back then. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that he has established this game so that each month he’ll have opponents against whom he can play and over whom he can “rule.”