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The spouse in question is Grace Goodhue Coolidge, the charmingly effervescent wife of dour Silent Cal. Known for decades as "The First Lady of Baseball," she was a fixture at Opening Days, the World Series, ordinary games at Fenway (and in her era there were many "ordinary" games at said park), and camped in front of her radio at home--tuned to any game within broadcast range. "I venture to say," she wrote to a close friend in the 1950s, "that not one of you cares a hoot about baseball but to me it is my very life"—and she meant it. But first a bit about her husband. Calvin wasn't exactly a fan himself, being unathletic and tightly focused on law and government. True, in his childhood he noted that "my ball game often interfered with my filling of the wood box. I have been taken out of bed to do penance for such derelictions." But by the time he had reached Ludlow, Vermont's Black River Academy he was fast becoming blasé concerning the National Pastime. "Games did not interest me much though I had some skill with a bat," he recalled. Regarding his Amherst years, he noted that while the school "won its share of trophies on the diamond . . . In those events I was only I was only an observer . . ." On the eve of the 1990 American League playoffs his son John (a loyal if somewhat skeptical Red Sox fan) recalled that as for playing ball with his father, he would have "nothing more than a catch. He [Calvin] was not at all athletically inclined." Silent Cal But Grace was Cal's direct opposite in baseball as in so many other fields. There is some controversy over when—and why—Grace Coolidge acquired such an abiding interest in the game. Some say she was so smitten from her youth, and was a scorekeeper at the University of Vermont. If that is the case she may have been presumed to have been a fan of Northampton's ill-fated Connecticut State League team, the Meadowlarks, when her husband was mayor of that city. No record of such an interest exists, however. Others hold that she turned to the national pastime to salve the grief resulting from son Calvin Jr.'s tragic death in July, 1924. John Coolidge has clarified matters: "I don't think she was interested in baseball at all when my father was Governor of Massachusetts. A friend of the family would take [brother] Cal and me to Fenway. My mother and father never went. If her interest came from the time of Cal's death, it was purely coincidental. It was only after they got into the White house that she became interested. There was no interest when my father was vice-president." Senators Fan In any case, during the Roaring Twenties, the First Lady could be regularly seen at Washington's Griffith Stadium, often chatting with Senators players (the Coolidges attended the wedding of Senators "Boy Wonder" manager Bucky Harris in October, 1926—of course, Harris had married the daughter of an administration official, Alien Property Custodian Howard Sutherland) and keeping hubby Calvin from bolting the park after perfunctorily performing his duties as ceremonial first-ball tosser. "She used to come to games," Harris recalled, "and sit right by the Senators' dugout. She came to the games with Cal and stayed there when the President would leave early. and then she'd come to other games alone. "All the Washington players knew her and spoke to her. she was the most rabid fan I ever knew in the White House." During the first game of the 1924 World Series which featured the local Senators versus John McGraw's New York Giants, the president, never one to idle time on entertainments, suddenly stood up to leave. Washington had never been in a World Series before. The immortal Walter Johnson was on the mound. It was the ninth inning, the score knotted at 2-2. Grace Coolidge sputtered, "Where do you think you're going? You sit down," as she grabbed his coat tails. The chief executive sat right back down. Grace even succeeded in getting Calvin to remain through all twelve innings of Washington's exciting seventh game victory. A photo of the first couple taken as the winning run scored shows Cal unusually animated and Grace looking like the cat that ate the canary. Clark Griffith then brought winning pitcher Walter Johnson to the Coolidges' box. The president displayed customary restraint. "Nice work," he twanged, "I'm glad you won. But Mrs. Coolidge had no qualms about the events. "Nor did she just cheer," noted The Sporting News, "She jumped up and down on both feet, waved her arms, called out to Johnson. . . . The picture of sedateness on her arrival, she left as rumpled, as tired, and as happy as the thousands of other fans." Meanwhile, Clark Griffith was becoming similarly unhinged. Normally when a president would leave the game, Griffith would escort him out of the park. On this occasion, he completely forgot about the First Couple and left them to find their way out by themselves. In Game Five of the 1925 World Series, however, Cal escaped from Griffith Stadium in the third inning, with Pittsburgh leading Washington 2-1. But Grace stood her ground and remained. The Senators rewarded her by tying the contest on right fielder Joe (not Bucky) Harris' home run. The home team ultimately lost 6-3, but the First Lady hung on to the end, cheering loudly as usual, and scoring every play. When Grace could not get out to a game, she employed that newfangled device, radio, to pull one in, either at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or aboard the Mayflower, the presidential yacht. If nothing was available over the airwaves, she would saunter over to the White House telegraph room to learn the latest scores. Radio Days Her interest in radio play-by-play continued for the rest of her life, well past television's advent. "She always listened to the radio, never on television," recalled John Coolidge, "She liked to visualize it -- said the TV picture was somewhat limited. Of course, television was less advanced back then. She never owned a television. A friend lent her one, but she preferred the radio. She like to keep busy, she liked to knit during those radio broadcasts." "Time is not wasted while I listen in on the ball game for I put it on the chair seats," she somewhat defensively noted, referring to some exquisite needlework she had done for her family. Her passion for the sport intensified after leaving the White House and after her husband's death in 1933. American League president Will Harridge never forgot the First Lady who so enthusiastically cheered on the Senators. At the beginning of each season his circuit bestowed an exceedingly thoughtful gift upon her. Every spring Mrs. Coolidge would receive a tasteful, monogrammed leather handbag from Harridge. It would be outfitted with special compartments to hold both her season pass and an American League schedule. She made sure she got full use from each year's gift. During the Second World War she opened her home to a WAVEs training at nearby Smith College. On occasion they would find that she had dozed off during a ball game. But if they ventured to turn the radio off, she would awake with a start and switch the broadcast back on. After World War II her baseball interest hit its peak. In November, 1948 we hear of her attending a baseball father-and-son banquet at Northampton's Edwards Congregational Church. Philadelphia A's righthander Joe Coleman, a Massachusetts boy, was guest speaker. Mrs. Coolidge not only kept busy by asking the most perceptive questions, she also supplied the answers. When a lad stumped the pitcher by asking if there had ever been a World Series triple play, the former First Lady whispered out to Coleman, "Bill Wambsganss, Cleveland infielder in the 1920 World Series," recalling the famed unassisted triple-killing. Red Sox Fan Although an avid Red Sox fan, Grace had other concerns as well. "She hoped for a Subway Series, but the Braves went to Milwaukee," recalls John Coolidge. "Lou Perini gave her a pass, but she never went much." She would tune into Red Barber and Connie Desmond on Brooklyn Dodger broadcasts, where she learned that for a mere quarter and a Post cereal boxtop, she could obtain a genuine Red Barber 1948 baseball guide. Grace received not only the guide, but a personal letter from the Old Redhead. "It means a great deal to us to know of your interest in baseball in general and the Brooklyn broadcast in particular," Barber wrote, "Bob Considine and other Washington writers have told me of your very real interest in baseball and that when you went to the baseball park you went for nine innings or more, if necessary." Grace was so thrilled she wrote to her son about it. Grace would inform others as well. “She’d tell me about some of the plays she had heard on the radio,” recalled Red Sox manager Joe Cronin. “We had a day for her to help out a home for deaf children a couple of years back. She was unable to attend that game since she wasn’t feeling that well.” "They'd trek over to Boston," recalled John Coolidge. “There were three of them, a friend, Mrs. [Florence B.] Adams, a retired MD [Dr. Joseph D. Collins] and they’d take off at the drop of a hat, either for a day game or they’d stay over. They’d do this several times a year. "This was before the days of the Massachusetts Turnpike. They'd take some local road, say, Route 2. To go from Northampton to Boston there was no through road." "The press always looked to see if she was on hand for the big game in Boston," noted her biographer Ishbel Ross, "and she usually was." One of her particular admirers was the aforementioned Bob Considine. Once on seeing her delight at a game, he decided her countenance was "somewhere beyond the expression of the Mona Lisa and short of an outright guffaw." Cleared she enjoyed herself at a game. In one trip to Fenway in July, 1949, Mrs. Adams was beaned by a foul ball as the trio sat near the Red Sox dugout. A good sized lump was raised, but no serious damage was done. Earlier that year she had made some news by picking both Boston clubs to win their respective pennants. "You may have heard over the radio," she wrote to John Coolidge, "that I had picked the red Sox and the Braves to win pennants this year. [Former Senators righthander] Bump Hadley had quite a spiel about it on his broadcast Friday night and mentioned the fact that he went to Mercersburg [Academy] with you and Calvin [Jr.] . . . The game is tied up now so I shall have to stop and listen . . . ." And at an advanced age Grace was taking even longer baseball jaunts. The American League supplied her with World Series tickets, and she traveled to New York in 1949 (where she met up Herbert Hoover) and to Philadelphia in 1950. When she could no longer attend in person, the American League sent her "amazing arrangements of flowers." And the former Washington fan still followed events along the Potomac, showing some chagrin with the newly-elected President Eisenhower. "I think the President is making a mistake,” she wrote to friends in April, 1953, "in not postponing his vacation for a day in order to throw out the first ball." It was when she would no longer travel to the shadow of the Big Green Monster that her closest friends knew she was beginning to fade. She admitted--like a true Coolidge--that she feared dying in a public place because of the publicity it would generate. When death finally took Grace Coolidge in July, 1957, Boston Globe headlines termed her “Long Active Red Sox Fan.” That she was. Calvin Coolidge on Baseball Silent Cal was noted for “Coolidge Luck,” so its no great surprise to note that the normally hapless Washington Senators won two of their three pennants while Cal resided on the Potomac. When in 1924 the Senators captured their first pennant and returned home they were met by a huge throng of fans—led by none other than Cal himself. He was positively voluble. “As the head of an enterprise which transacts some business and maintains a considerable staff in this town,” he told the crowd, “I have a double satisfaction in welcoming home the victorious Washington baseball team. First, you bring the laurels from one of the hardest-fought contests in the history of the national game. Second, I feel hopeful that, with the happy result now assured, it will be possible for the people of Washington gradually to resume interest in the ordinary concerns of life. "So long as we could be satisfied with a prompt report of the score by innings a reasonable attention to business was still possible. but when the entire population reached the point of requiring the game to be described play by play, I began to doubt whether the highest efficiency was being promoted. I contemplated action of a vigorously disciplinary character, but the outcome makes it impossible. As a result, we are a somewhat demoralized community—but exceedingly happy over it." He concluded: "We pitch with the pitchers, we go to bat with the batters and we make a home run with the hard hitters. The training, the energy, the intelligence which these men lavish upon their craft ought to be an inspiration in every walk of life. They are a great band, these armored knights of the bat and ball. They are held up to a high standard of honor on the field, which they have seldom betrayed. "While baseball remains our national game, our national tastes will be on a higher level and our ideals on a firmer foundation." |
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| Baseball is as American as the presidency itself (although the reverse cannot always be said), and many a ball fan has occupied the White House. Surprisingly, the greatest White House baseball enthusiast of all time was not to be found among our chief executives but rather among our first ladies. |
| Grace Coolidge: First Lady of Baseball by David Pietrusza |
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