Last season, President Barack Obama created�one of opening day's biggest headlines,�pulling out a cap belonging to his hometown Chicago White Sox and tugging it over his head before a ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Nationals game.
This year, there was no such controversy as the President and the White House elected to skip his standing invitation to opening day festivities at Nationals Park ? or any other ballpark, for that matter.
So why didn't Obama loosen that left arm on Thursday for his second opening day pitch since taking office? �(He was out of the country for opening day in 2009, but he did throw out the first pitch at the 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis.)
The White House didn't cite an official reason for staying home, but it's not too hard to speculate why he left the Nationals' first pitch duties to representatives of the five branches of the armed forces this time. With the war going on in Libya and Japan still trying to recover from its natural disasters and nuclear threats, perhaps President Obama and his advisers felt it wouldn't be appropriate to take an afternoon off from his duties to create a frivolous headline with more serious matters at hand.
After all, even George W. Bush ? a big baseball fan who threw out five opening day pitches during his tenure ? refrained from participating in opening day in 2002 and '03 as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just beginning.
There's also the possibility that Obama plans to scale back his public athletic endeavors for awhile after taking plenty of heat for filling out a NCAA tournament bracket on television the week after the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.
At the very least, he's aware that he received some criticism for that move:
"A lot of folks focused on the fact that I filled out my bracket," he told ABC's "Diane Sawyer on Tuesday. "Obviously I hadn't been spending that much time studying it since I don't have anybody in the Final Four."
The president shouldn't feel too bad. Hardly anyone has a respectable Final Four these days.
Also, there's something telling me he'll be back on the rubber next year. The only president to ever throw a first pitch in each of his years was Eisenhower, who did the deed eight times and is tied with Franklin Delano Roosevelt for most presidential opening day pitches ever.
*FDR might have done more, but he did not participate in any opening days after the United States entered World War II. For more trivia, check out�this list of presidential first pitches.
Plus, next year is an election year. Doing something as presidential-looking as throwing out a first pitch never hurt anyone at the ballot box.
Put Obama down for a 2012 return, right alongside Stephen Strasburg.
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