February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Eventually, he became so obsessed with this particular sporting life he had an aide track down the author so the president-elect might discuss the book with him over the phone. No point in fretting too much about politics and the leadership of the free world when he could be talking baseball.
Amid all the Bush-whacking going on in Ireland the last three years, it’s heartening that some wise soul has seen fit to invite the U.S. president to attend the All-Ireland hurling qualifier between Limerick and Tipperary at the Gaelic Grounds next Saturday night. It’s only fitting he’s asked along. His presence at a meeting of EU ministers in Dromoland Castle earlier that day is forcing the late throw-in, and whatever you think of his politics, Bush is a genuine sports fan. Not in a “Bertie Ahern the sports-mad taoiseach” sort of way either.
If the Clinton presidency’s interest in sport began and ended with his rather embarrassing tendency to cheat at golf, usually signing for an 80 after his partners clocked him hitting 200-plus strokes, the Bush CV is a tad different. With a diverse background, boasting spells as head cheerleader in high school (no laughing please), fullback on the Yale rugby team, and part-owner of a major league baseball franchise, sport courses through his life.
His first act upon becoming governor of Texas in 1995 was to decorate his office with a collection of 250 autographed baseballs, the sort of folksy thing only a man who once coached Little League, America’s equivalent of managing an Under-8 street league team, would be wont to do.
Like politics, sport is something of a family heirloom. The W in his name stands for Walker, in honor of his maternal great-grandfather, Herbert Walker, a former president of the USGA and the man who gave golf the Walker Cup. For a long time, Bush struggled to have as illustrious an impact as his predecessors. His first flirtation with big-time sport may have been getting caught driving drunk with the Australian tennis player John Newcombe a passenger in his car back in 1976, and the highlight of his athletic career in college was being escorted off the Princeton campus by police.
“It was just some undergraduate exuberance,” he said later of the incident where he had led a group of fans tearing down the gridiron goalposts to mark a famous Yale victory over their Ivy League rivals. No charges were pressed once the miscreants gave an undertaking never to visit the university again.
Nobody is more aware of his shortcomings than himself. He sent up his ballhandling skills by dubbing himself “Little Mister Magician” at Yale, and later dined out on stories of his own ineptitude. When he took control of the Texas
Rangers in 1989, Bush gathered the staff around him for a speech. With the employees expecting a familiar ritual — new owner boasts he was once a great athlete himself — Bush surprised them with a self-deprecating anecdote about the moment in his life when he realized just how bad he was at baseball.
His great uncle Herbie owned a share of the New York Mets in the 1960s, and Bush’s years running the Rangers have come to define his professional existence. Although before that, he had dabbled in the oil business, it was his association with baseball that catapulted him into the public eye and gave him the sort of profile a person with an eye on higher office requires. While his father’s connections undoubtedly played a huge part in him taking over the Rangers, he actually turned out to be quite good at the job of managing partner.
Rather than just stay insulated in the owner’s private box, he used to sit behind the dugout for home games, endearing himself to fans and becoming the recipient of abuse when the team was losing. The press liked him because he’d stand on the field during warmups, shooting the breeze with them. As the son of the then president, he had a security detail and an accompanying party piece. He’d point out the secret service guy lurking in the stand, say “watch this,” and then clap his hands real loud so the unfortunate undercover officer recoiled, clutching his earpiece.
The frat boy sense of humor and the terrible decision to trade Sammy Sosa (something akin to if Alex Ferguson had flogged Ryan Giggs to Manchester City as a 19-year-old) aside, he made a real go of the Rangers. He transformed them into a winning franchise, securing — via the sort of political chicanery becoming a future president — a wonderful new stadium, and making himself a multimillionaire when he sold the club on in 1998. By then, he was governor of Texas and had all but given up on his dream job of becoming baseball commissioner. A run for the White House was to be his consolation prize.
His family tree ensures that Bush has always had a somewhat skewered view of the way history and sports can interact. Asked one time about how his father’s term affected his own life, he recalled an afternoon when he and his brothers were playing volleyball against some U.S. Marines on a Camp David handball court. Midway through the game, George Sr. emerged on an overlooking balcony to interrupt proceedings and announce: “Gentleman, we have just captured General Manuel Noriega.”
With previous knowledge of how politics and games intersect then, an evening spent observing the hurlers of Limerick and Tipperary flaking timber off each other while the natives of both counties swap insults all around him would be quite the experience for Bush. It might even put him off violent conflict for life.