Bill Clinton at the Church of Baseball: The Presidency, Civil Religion, and the National Pastime in the 1990s by Chris Birkett (review)

Reviewed by: Bill Clinton at the Church of Baseball: The Presidency, Civil Religion, and the National Pastime in the 1990sby Chris Birkett Randall Balmer Chris Birkett. Bill Clinton at the Church of Baseball: The Presidency, Civil Religion, and the National Pastime in the 1990s. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2023. 237pp. 35. 00 paper. We Americans demand a lot from baseball. It remains a paean to rural, idyllic values despite its development during the Industrial Revolution and its rejection of the clock, the icon of industrialism. Walt Whitman saw great things in baseball, and Jacques Barzun wrote that it was essential for understanding America itself. The game has stoked the fantasies of countless writers, including Bernard Malamud and W. P. Kinsella, not to mention Hollywood screenwriters. Baseball is Kevin Costner's muse. Despite the fact that it is no longer America's favorite game and despite owners' best efforts to destroy it, baseball has proved remarkably durable, sturdy enough to provide an interpretive lens for one of the nation's most consequential and controversial presidencies. In Bill Clinton at the Church of Baseball: The Presidency, Civil Religion, and the National Pastime in the 1990s, Chris Birkett adroitly uses baseball as an instrument for understanding Clinton's presidency. The author opens with Clinton's State of the Union address in 1999, which took place at the nadir of his presidency. The Monica Lewinsky scandal had come to light and the president faced impeachment. He invited Sammy Sosa, who along with Mark McGwire had eclipsed Babe Ruth's home run record the previous year, to the House chamber and hailed him as an example of "the true meaning of brotherhood" (2). On that occasion as well as countless others in a turbulent presidency, Birkett writes, "Clinton summoned the traditional rituals and mythological ideals of baseball in an effort to validate his leadership at times of political peril and personal jeopardy" (3). Baseball has long been a fixture of presidential politics (Birkett says that, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, every president since William End Page 66Howard Taft has thrown an Opening Day pitch). Clinton, however, took the affinity to new levels. The Clinton White House hosted an elaborate celebration of Ken Burns's PBS series on baseball coincident with its release in September 1994. Out of those festivities, Clinton staffers came away with new metaphors and strategies to revive a flagging presidency. Burns even met with administration speechwriters to craft "Burnsian notions of the universality of the American experience and applied the sacred elements that bound that sic imagined American community together—parenting, civil duty, and the national pastime" (46). During the baseball strike that suspended half of the 1994 season (including the World Series) and threatened the following season, Clinton sought to mediate, thereby becoming "the first sitting president publicly to get involved in trying to settle a labor dispute in professional sports" (53). Although his efforts did not pay off directly, Clinton's public hectoring nevertheless brought the sides together and salvaged the 1995 season. The president was himself a baseball fan—associates attested that he tracked the standings on a regular basis—but he also recognized the political benefits of intervention. "If you guys could resolve this, " Clinton told the head of the National Labor Relations Board, "they would elect me president for life" (57). Birkett is especially adept at drawing juxtapositions. Clinton's attempt to mediate the baseball strike took place after the Democratic Party's drubbing in the mid-term elections of 1994, turning control of Congress over to the Republicans and stymieing the president. Clinton seized on Cal Ripken Jr. 's pursuit of Lou Gehrig's consecutive game record at the same time the president was trying to push Congress to adopt his welfare reforms, which included mandates for recipients to find employment. Clinton referred frequently to Ripken's work ethic and attended the player's record-setting game in Baltimore. His controversial welfare reform passed the following year. Birkett writes: "This legislative landmark had been delivered with baseball deployed as part of a rhetorical framework which reinforced the sanctity of the work ethic" (107). As with any conversation surrounding sports, the issue. . .