With Spring Training underway for our “nation’s pastime,” a few of our Masonic Presidents of days gone by are receiving a little extra attention.

Since July, 2006, at every home game of the Washington Nationals baseball team, a fourth-inning “Presidents Race” is held.   It is a between-innings diversion, a chance for a spectator chuckle, and it has become a tradition in District of Columbia baseball.

Until now [2013], the contestants were mascot caricatures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.  This year, the big news is that a fifth Past President, Brother Mason William Howard Taft, has been added to the racing contest.

This baseball “news” has received much media coverage, from a feature article in the Washington Post to a story in Sports Illustrated. Although the reporting pokes fun at the 340-pound Taft, the 27th President had already made his mark in baseball history.  In 1910, he became the first president to throw out the opening pitch at a major league game.  He also is credited with launching the “seventh inning stretch,” when he stood during one game and all others in the stadium followed his lead.

Three of the five Past Presidents who race at baseball games in Washington were Masons.  George Washington, of course, is a well-known Virginia Mason.  Teddy Roosevelt received his Masonic degrees in New York, and Brother Taft was made a Mason “at sight” in Ohio. Taft, the only U.S. President who later became a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was also an enthusiastic supporter of the creation of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria.

Little did Taft know that in 2013 he would be “racing” against fellow Masons Washington and T. Roosevelt on many balmy nights in our Nation’s Capital.

From Emessay Notes, March 2013