Even if you’re not a baseball fan, you’ve probably already heard President Trump was shamelessly booed at Nationals Park on Sunday night when the Washington Nationals took on the Houston Astros for Game 5 of the World Series.
They didn’t just boo either; thousands of fans chanted “Lock him up!” repeatedly and another fan snuck in an “Impeach Trump” banner they hung in the 3rd level nosebleed section.
However, another U.S. President was booed at the World Series but the circumstances were vastly different.
In 1951, President Harry Truman was met with a shower of boos as he entered the stadium on Opening Day at Griffith Stadium where the Washington Senators took on the New York Yankees.
The New York Times wrote that in the eighth inning, “the crowd booed lustily when an announcement came over the public address system requesting all persons to remain in their seats until President Truman and his official party had left the stadium.”
The Washington Evening Star declared it “the coldest reception ever given a Chief Executive at an opening ball game.” Apparently, the administration saw it coming because it was the president’s first public event after he removed Douglas MacArthur as commander of United Nations forces in Korea.
President George H.W. Bush was booed when he was introduced at an All-Star Game in San Diego in 1992.
But nobody got the raining of boos worse than former President Herbert Hoover. Before he took the oath of office, Hoover played baseball at Stanford University so he was always a baseball lover and would attend games as frequently as he could.
Hoover attended four Opening Days for the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium and even threw out the first pitch in 1929. And he also made it to the World Series in 1929, 1930 and 1931.
But it was President Hoover’s final trip in Philadelphia’s Shibe Park in 1931 where angry American fans booed louder than ever.
In his memoir Hoover noted, “I kept this engagement only because I felt that my presence at a sporting event might be a gesture of reassurance to a country suffering from a severe attack of ‘jitters.’ It happened when he got up to leave and was met with, “a resounding chorus of boos,” and “the president of the United States was accorded the bird, or razzberry.”
They even chanted, “We want beer!” Many fans longed for a repeal of Prohibition outlawing alcohol at the time.
Why did they boo him?
1931 was at the height of the Great Depression where poverty areas in major cities were nicknamed “Hoovervilles.”
That’s why he claimed it to be a “gesture of reassurance to a country suffering.” The former president thought he could reassure Americans that everything was going to be okay.
But it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay for many, many more years.
President Trump is in a complete opposite position.
The economy has never been better. Unemployment is at an all-time low and the Stock Market continues to soar.
Trump also announced on Sunday morning before the game that U.S. Special Forces successfully killed ISIS leader and the most wanted terrorist in the world, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
And yet, thousands of fans in attendances booed him. It’s disgraceful. What more does President Trump have to do to win over their support?