Why Are Sports Championships Celebrated at the White House?
The history of parties at the people’s house
When a team wins a championship they are on top of the world. There are ticker-tape parades, champagne celebrations, and million-dollar contract extensions. Players are off to Disneyland and to celebrate with families and friends. So how, then, in the midst of all this celebration, did the White House get involved?
The mixing of sports and the White House started in 1865. As Yoni Applebaum writes in the Atlantic,
“In 1865, the United States was engaged in the project of Reconstruction, building a new society in the wake of the Civil War. It was also engaged in playing ball. Union soldiers brought home with them a passion for the American game, and fans flocked to ballfields to enjoy the pleasures of peacetime.”
Both black and white athletes shared fields and enjoyed playing on the White Lot, which was on the White House grounds.
The lot hosted a three-team tournament on August 30th, 1865, which allowed a variety of spectators to rub shoulders and provided a distraction from the difficult work of mending the union back together. At the conclusion of this tournament, the host Washington Senators brought the victorious Brooklyn Atlantics to meet with President Johnson in the White House. This was the first time that amateur baseball teams enjoyed the privilege of meeting with the President.
The idea of the baseball teams meeting with the president was to provide a measure of unity, to allow baseball to bring the nation back together, and to become the national pastime. That unity, however, was based on disunity. For the foreseeable future invitations were limited to white players and black players were shut out of the major leagues entirely.
President Grant was the first president in 1869 to welcome paid athletes to the White House, which at the time was known as the Presidential Mansion. Post-Civil War, baseball’s popularity had boomed and there were many working and upper-class men who had taken to the game as a regular pastime. Many frowned at paying athletes to play the game, but the Cincinnati Red Stockings of the newly formed National League scoffed at this prohibition and were playing excellent baseball. This proficiency led President Grant, himself a fellow Ohioan, to invite the Red Stockings to the Presidential Mansion where they shared cigars.
The first victorious championship team to visit the White House were the Washington Senators in 1925. President Coolidge invited the team eleven months after winning their first championship in 1924 while on route to playing in their second world series, although they would lose in 1925. Similar to President Grant, President Coolidge was not a baseball fan, but he made the team feel welcome nonetheless.
The party didn’t stop when it came to basketball. The 1962 NBA champion Boston Celtics were invited to the White House by President Kennedy of Massachusetts. They were later joined by Indiana University, the first NCAA champions to visit President Ford in the White House in 1976.
Other sports benefited from a warm welcome from the White House. In 1991, the Pittsburgh Penguins visited George Bush at the White House where he welcomed the players and cared for goalie Tom Barrasso’s cancer-stricken daughter by playing with her on his grandchildren’s swing and having her meet the family dog. She later became a cancer survivor.
In 1979, President Carter welcomed the Pittsburgh Steelers and waved a terrible towel, whipping up the excitement. They were joined by the MLB champion Pittsburgh Pirates, in what was the first joint appearance by championship teams in White House history. President Reagan was a tremendous sports fan and invited a variety of sports teams to the White House, even having a celebratory bucket of popcorn dumped on him and playing catch with a team member.
While generally a visit to the White House is a celebratory event, not every athlete shares that feeling. Their reasons range from personal preference such as Michael Jordan choosing to go golfing instead, to political differences such as abortion debates, and feelings of anger towards over expansion of the federal government. Former President Trump has used White House celebrations as a tool to promote those he agrees with and to disinvite those who take issue with his policies.
Conclusion
Few of us have the athletic talent required to win an athletic championship at the highest level to even earn an invitation to the White House, so we are thankful that there are a variety of ceremonies the President facilitates which we may be lucky enough to one day attend. These events are a source of great pride for both the athletes themselves and the country. Fans of the winning team are able to bask in the glory of the ceremony while other organizations are actively scheming to be the ones invited next year. Traditionally, the White House has always been the people’s house, and we love honoring our favorite sports heroes on its hallowed grounds.
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