President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state of the United States. Benjamin Harrison was the first President known to attend a major league game, on June 6, 1892. Presidents traditionally threw the first pitch of the Major League Baseball season, although that tradition petered out after the Washington Senators departed the Nation's Capital following the 1971 season.

Throughout the 19th Century it was common in the nation to name male children after former presidents. The most common presidents were the first, George Washington, and the third, Thomas Jefferson. However, this trend has gone out of style in more recent years. The only Hall of Famer to be named after a president was Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander, named for the Grover Cleveland, the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president.

List of Presidents (after 1861)

• Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865
• Andrew Johnson, 1865-1869
• Ulysses S. Grant, 1869–1877
• Rutherford B. Hayes, 1877–1881
• James A. Garfield, 1881
• Chester A. Arthur, 1881-1885
• Grover Cleveland, 1885-1889
• Benjamin Harrison, 1889-1893
• Grover Cleveland, 1893-1897
• William McKinley, 1897-1901
• Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909
• William Howard Taft, 1909-1913
• Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921
• Warren G. Harding, 1921-1923
• Calvin Coolidge, 1923-1929
• Herbert Hoover, 1929-1933
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-1945
• Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953
• Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953-1961
• John F. Kennedy, 1961-1963
• Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1969
• Richard Nixon, 1969-1974
• Gerald Ford, 1974-1977
• Jimmy Carter, 1977-1981
• Ronald Reagan, 1981-1989
• George H. W. Bush, 1989-1993
• Bill Clinton, 1993-2001
• George W. Bush, 2001-2009
• Barack Obama, 2009-2017
• Donald Trump, 2017-2021
• Joe Biden, 2021-

Further Reading

• Paul Dickson and William B. Mead: Baseball: The Presidents' Game, Farragut Publishing Company, Washington, DC, 1993. ISBN 978-0918535160
• Curt Smith: The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2018. ISBN 978-0-8032-8809-6

Related Sites

• Play Ball Mr. President! exhibit at the Gerald R. Ford Library