The Presidents and the Pastime by Curt Smith

Author:Curt Smith [Smith, Curt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO003030 Sports & Recreation / Baseball / History
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0739-5
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2018-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

10

“Friendship, a Perfect Blendship!”

Gerald Ford, 1974–1977

Many attended Gerald Ford’s swearing-in as president in the East Room on the August 1974 day where earlier Richard Nixon said, “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” That night George H. W. Bush wrote in his diary of “indeed a new spirit, a new lift.” Having joined Ford in the House of Representatives in 1967, Bush felt the new president a friend—paraphrasing Chuck Berry, a political “Jerry B. Goode.” The sole U.S. chief executive not elected president or vice president would tie autobiography and biography: think Ford’s A Time to Heal and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life respectively.

Ford is said to have calmed America. In fact, he taught it. The former congressman was impressed with policy, not himself. He was comfortable in the presidency, treating pomp like Billy Sunday did sin. James Fenimore Cooper wrote, “Truth was the Deerslayer’s polar star.” It lit Ford’s first speech in his new office: “Honesty is always the best policy. . . . Truth is the glue that holds government together.” Who would not say right man, right time?

Born in Omaha on Bastille Day 1913, the unGallic Leslie Lynch King Jr. was raised by mother Dorothy after his parents divorced. In 1916 Mom married Gerald Rudolff Ford in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The boy took his stepfather’s name, admiring him deeply. Jerry worked odd jobs, was a lifetime Eagle Scout, and hoped to emulate legendary football running back Red Grange. As president, Ford endured several incidents, including inexplicably falling down stairs, that falsely evoked a stumblebum lacking coordination. Actually the center, linebacker, and line snapper on the University of Michigan’s 1932–33 two-time national champion football team was a superb athlete who read the sports section first. He liked its lesson: “the value of team play.”

Ford was colorblind, but not blind to justice. In his senior year, Georgia Tech refused to play a scheduled game if a black Michigan player, Willis Ward, took the field. Despite Ford’s ire, including writing letters to officials, the administration decided to bench Willis—Jerry’s best friend and roommate on the road. The future president threatened to quit. At Ford’s funeral in 2007 president George W. Bush said, “He was furious at Georgia Tech for making the demand, and at the University of Michigan for caving in. He agreed to play only after Willis Ward personally asked him to.” The episode augured a leader who, above all, was fair.

Ward became a probate court judge in Michigan, he and Ford remaining lifelong friends, speaking little of the incident but reuniting on a glorious 1970s weekday in the White House. Later Michigan retired Ford’s jersey No. 48, the NCAA naming him among “the hundred most influential student-athletes” of the last century in 2006. In 2012 an Emmy Award–nominated documentary, Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game, was released.

After college, Ford spurned pro

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