This extraordinary look at both baseball and the presidency, and how the two are intertwined, starting with Teddy Roosevelt to the present, could well be my favorite book of the year.

Amazing and fascinating detail of how the presidents related to the game. Smith didn't just explore whether the president's threw out first pitches, as presidents are known to do, but rather delved further into whether they were fans, played the game, which teams they liked, even the extent to which their wives and/or families were baseball fans, all put into historical context. Some of the details are already pretty well known, like FDR's "green-light letter" allowing the MLB to continue during World War 2, or George W. Bush and the return of baseball at Yankee Stadium after 9/11. Other portions were not nearly as well known.

I've read more than 300 baseball books thus far and Curt Smith is among the very best authors on our National Pastime. I used to think that Mead and Dickson's Baseball: The President's Game was the definitive book on the subject, but not anymore. This is it.

Highly recommended!! An outstanding book that is meant to be savored.

The Presidents and the Pastime by Curt Smith gives a terrific overview of how Baseball came to be the great American pastime sport. It was fun reading about all the different kinds of opinions that each of the presidents had about the game. I also learned a great deal of information about each of the presidents that I did not know before reading this book as well. If someone is looking to just learn about the presidents, this would be a good book to recommend. There is so much great information about each of the presidents in the book that it makes for a great starting point to learn about them. There is also a lot of information about all of the wars that the presidents and baseball had to deal with.I loved reading about FDR. He is one of my all time favorite Presidents. It was really interesting to read about how Baseball handled WWII. I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Baseball, but I do like watching a game every now and then. I was always curious about history of baseball. I'm glad I found this book on Netgalley. I'm really enjoyed reading about the history behind baseball and the presidents.

When I first saw this title and description I was pretty excited to read it. Politics and baseball go hand in hand, and given Curt Smith's background (writer for Bush 41), this should have been phenomenal. However, much of the book is disjointed. The first third of the book, all the chapters before Eisenhower, lack a coherent logic and flow. These chapters had the potential for something amazing to happen - with the increase in popularity of baseball after the civil war in tandem with the rapid growth and development of the U.S. leading into the world wars, this section of the book could have had a grand arc with wonderful development and description, instead it is largely glossed over with trivia and data. The second third of the book is a mixed bag - the chapters on the Republican presidents (particularly Reagan and Bush 41) are eloquent, thoughtful, insightful, and have a beautiful connection between the presidents and the national pastime. However, the chapters on the Democratic presidents tend to have a number of petty, childish, partisan swipes at their administrations and their character, and as a result the writing suffers. While this is not surprising (as Smith is a partisan himself), it is disappointing in a book with this type of focus. Had Smith written with the same verve and elan as he did for the late 20th century Republicans, this book would have been a classic; it would have been a must read for any baseball fan. However, we are only left to lament what might have been.

I received a free Kindle copy of The Presidents and the Pastime by Curt Smith courtesy of Net Galley  and University of Nebraska Press, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as I am a fan of baseball and american history and the description made this book sound interesting. This is the first book by Curt Smith that I have read.

I had high hopes for this book, but the author's writing style and tendency, particularly in the latter chapters where the reader is more familiar with the subject, to drone on made this a less enjoyable read than it could have been. The book covers the span of Presidents from Lincoln to Trump and does reveal some new information, but most of it is well known  to hard core baseball fans.

I suggest that if you decide to read this book that you take it in small doses over a period of time as it can get mind numbing if one tries to read it in a brief period of time.

Are you interested in the Office of the President in the United States? Are you interested in the sport of baseball? If you answered yes to both of these questions, or even just one of them, then this book is for you. From stories you probably know like the first presidential first pitch and George W. Bush's first pitch in a post 9/11 United states, to the lesser known disdain Teddy Roosevelt had for baseball, you will learn quite a bit about how MLB and the president have interacted throughout time.

A fascinating and enjoyable -- albeit long-winded -- stroll through two centuries of baseball and presidential history. For you're not just getting stories and anecdotes about the American presidents and their connection with baseball, you're also getting a treatise on the development of the game, from rules changes to historic stadia to franchise moves to cable television. You'll learn that one of the Roosevelts never cared for baseball (he considered it a sissy game); that Abe Lincoln might have been the original Sultan of Swat; and that Truman could throw out the first pitch on opening day with both his left and right arms. Even more interesting , you'll find out that some first ladies, notably Bess Truman and Pat Nixon, were addicted to the game. Bess even kept her own scorebook. The best recommendation is to treat this book like a 162-game season, and delve in and out of it over the course of the summer. That's in part because the latter chapters are way too long, especially since most readers will already be familiar with much of the material covered from Reagan onward. You'll have to pace yourself, just like pitchers in the bygone era of complete games did for all nine innings.

A very good (but long) book about US Presidents and baseball. It was as a great read with lots of great information on how the two live up to each other.

Two of the most American of institutions are the Presidency and the game of baseball. They have been intertwined together for over a century – from Abraham Lincoln playing “town ball” to Barack Obama writing “Go Sox!” in the visitor book at the Baseball Hall of Fame, there are many stories of what the game has meant to Presidents. They are captured in this wonderful book by Curt Smith, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush.

Every story that has been passed down through the generations is shared here. The book may disprove a myth such as William Howard Taft inventing the seventh inning stretch, which did not happen. It may explain in more detail about well-known events as Commissioner Landis did offer to suspend baseball before Franklin Roosevelt wrote the “Green Light Letter”. Or, the reader may learn a new fact like this: Calvin Coolidge was not the baseball person in his family as that was his wife Grace who was the scorekeeper at the University of Vermont and kept a perfect scorecard at each game she and her husband attended. Even bigger surprises may be found in the book, such as learning that Donald Trump was actually a good ballplayer.

One other interesting fact is that the first President to attend a baseball game at any level was Andrew Johnson. Also in the nineteenth century, Benjamin Harrison became the first President to attend a professional baseball game. Once the calendar turns to the 20th century, Smith covers each president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump by describing not only that man’s connection to baseball, but also a little bit about each man’s term in office and the accomplishments.

The book stays politically neutral with two notable exceptions. One is that Smith has much respect for his former boss as he looked fondly back at George H.W.Bush. The best baseball story for him is a “summit” he called in 1991 with Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio to honor the 50th anniversary of their achievements of 1941 – Williams hitting .406 and DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak. Why this was called a “summit” is that after the speeches in the Rose Garden, the President and his two guests flew to Toronto in Air Force One to meet Canadian Prime Minister before that year’s All-Star game.

The one area where there is really no neutrality is that Smith felt that when Washington D.C. lost its major league team (twice) Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon did not do enough to stop the teams from leaving. They were the men in the White House when the first team left after the 1960 season for Minnesota and the second team, an expansion team awarded to Washington to ease the pain, left after the 1971 season.

This is just a very small sample of the many stories connecting baseball and the presidency. Even Presidents whose reputation for sport lies elsewhere, such at Theodore Roosevelt and Gerald Ford in football, the reader will lean how each president has a baseball connection. This book is rich with so many stories, it is one that is very hard to put down. Baseball fans, history buffs and political junkies will all love this book.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Awesome book! It was interesting to read about how important baseball was to the Presidents, despite political affiliation. This book reinforced the idea that baseball is America’s pastime!