The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the Presidency

Chapter 6. Inside TR’s Sporting Presidency

Unlike his well-publicized hunting trips, much of Teddy Roosevelt’s daily exercise took place closer to home. Beginning with Ulysses Grant, presidents normally left the White House for two or three months each summer to escape the sweltering heat in Washington. Likewise, Roosevelt and Edith along with their >ve children went to their Long Island home, Sagamore Hill, where the breezes o= Long Island Sound made the summer far more bearable. There, or in Washington, the Roosevelt family re?ected the vigor and high voltage of the president. Although Edith Roosevelt was not as energetically athletic—how could she be?—she did share her husband’s love for the outdoors . At Oyster Bay, Edith and Theodore rowed around Long Island Sound, rode horseback together, and enjoyed many hours of bird watching. In addition , the youthful >rst couple’s >ve energetic children kept both the domestic White House and the summer White House lively and newsworthy. Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, from his >rst marriage to Alice Lee, who was seventeen when he became president, had the evanescent beauty of her mother (the song “Alice Blue Gown” was written in her honor) and the energy of her father. Then there were Ted, Kermit, Archie, and Quentin and daughter Ethel. All the boys shared their father’s enthusiasm for sports and outdoor interests and kept an array of wildlife in the White House, including alligators—and even Ethel occasionally joined in the childhood high jinks. Not to mention the president’s pillow >ghts in the White House with his two youngest, Archie and Quentin. With their father’s encouragement, Archie and Quentin also became handson naturalists—in other words, they captured and kept whatever they could get their hands on. When the president returned from his two-month western trip in 1903, he brought a baby badger from Kansas. The boys found turtles and snakes, which they kept at the White House. To his father’s amusement , Quentin had a “very friendly King snake” and two smaller snakes in 6 Inside TR’s Sporting Presidency ★ ★★ ★★★★★ ★ ★★ their collection. One day he burst into his father’s o;ce as he was meeting with Attorney General Charles Bonaparte. Quentin dropped the two small snakes in his father’s lap. In the meantime, the king snake was trying to devour the smaller snakes. Then the boy raced into the next room where two congressmen were waiting and presented them with his trophies. Roosevelt could hardly keep from laughing.1 One of the favorite outdoor sports for Roosevelt and his boys was a game called point to point. Beginning from a >xed point, often in Rock Creek Valley (now Rock Creek Park) in Washington or at Sagamore Hill on Long Island, 64 ★ the man who changed everything Theodore Roosevelt posing with the “tennis cabinet,” those insiders who joined him on the White House tennis court. An all-season player, the president attacked tennis with the same vigor and intensity that he scaled cli=s and rode horseback in Rock Creek Valley. Among those in the photo are Captain Archie Butt, Chief Forester Gi=ord Pinchot, future secretary of war and state Henry Stimson, French ambassador Jules Jusserand, Yale football great Pudge He=el>nger, Secretary of the Interior James Gar>eld, Secretary of State (and TR classmate at Harvard) Robert Bacon. Some of those pictured were TR’s playmates in other pursuits. Missing is son Ted who played when he “blew into town.” Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. the participants had to walk up, across, and through whatever stood in their way. It was a purer form of what the president called “scrambling,” hikes through rugged terrain on which the president often led unsuspecting diplomats and visitors. Compared with today’s presidents, the chief executive had a ?exible schedule . There were days when Roosevelt’s desk calendar was empty (in the early 1900s, visitors could still walk into the White House and ask to see the president ). Roosevelt organized his days so that he played tennis three times each week—a relatively relaxed schedule for TR (once, in his twenties, he had played ninety-one games in a single day). The men who played alongside or against the president—at least thirty in seven years—were dubbed the “tennis cabinet.” Among the participants whose names appear most frequently were Bob Bacon, assistant secretary of state (and brie?y...