Ronald Reagan once said, "Baseball is our national pastime, that is if you discount politics."
With that remark, the 40th President illuminated a link between our national sport and the nation it helped to build. In fact, the game is almost as old as the presidency itself. George Washington was said to "sometimes throw and catch a ball for hours with his aide-de-camp." Meanwhile, the academically inclined Thomas Jefferson believed, "Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind." Even Abraham Lincoln once missed a Cabinet meeting because he was busy watching the Brooklyn Excelsiors cream the Washington Senators 33-28 down at the ball field.