The All Star game will feature President Obama throwing out the first pitch and the Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Carter in a public service video to be shown at the game. 

How exciting.  Seven minutes of former presidents spotlighting people who have performed outstanding community service.  Maybe during next year's NBA finals we can stop and have Al Gore do two minutes on global warming.  It won't be as long as the ex-presidents are getting from baseball, but it will seem longer.

Much longer.

Which makes me wonder.  What sort of sports fans would the presidents be?  Would they go out together to games?

I have this image of a drunken Lyndon Johnson heckling some Illinois fans at a Longhorns football game.  Finally, having taken all he can take, Ulysses S. Grant climbs up the bleachers and confronts Johnson.  All the while, Abraham Lincoln is looking in his pockets for his car keys and hoping none of the Texas fans notice Grant was sitting next to him.

George Washington was a big guy, so I can see him following the NBA.  Courtside with Spike Lee at Knicks game, growing rapidly tired of Thomas Jefferson poking him in the back with a foam finger and then looking away innocently.  Afterwards, as the police are escorting him out of the building, Washington confesses.  "I cannot tell a lie, I decked the @#!% and I'd do it again."

FDR would have problems.  No smoking in Madison Square Garden.  Big Rangers fan.  First period, the big smile, the wave to the crowd.  Second period, he's asking Calvin Coolidge for nicotine gum.  Third period he's screaming down to James K. Polk (wearing a Carolina Hurricanes jersey), "You wanna piece of me Polk?  I got your manifest destiny right here pal." 

Woodrow Wilson was a killjoy.  I could see him at the track trying to explain to Truman, Nixon, and Coolidge what a bullet workout meant and why the really smart money was the 5-2 favorite and not the longshot Truman was about to throw his money away on.  When they go to the concession stand you could imagine Nixon whispering to Truman, "I'm not saying we should, because it would be wrong, very wrong.  But I know this fellow Liddy who could make the whole thing look like an accident."

John F. Kennedy and the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.  Trouble.

Bill Clinton and the Laker Girls.  Bigger trouble.

Grover Cleveland and the Alabama cheerleaders.  Instant paternity suit.

Reagan would be the great organizer of baseball excursions.  The good natured guy who gets everyone together and sorts out who is going in what car.  Who agrees to let Teddy Roosevelt (who won't ever shut up) ride with him, along with Martin Van Buren (who thinks he invented the infield fly rule), and William Henry Harrison who whines the whole time about the air conditioning being too cold and how he'll catch his death of cold.

You would probably want to be sure and take Andrew Jackson's keys after the game.  Millard Fillmore would agree with everyone on everything, and still nobody would like him.  Ike and Gerald Ford would sit in the back talking about their playing days while Bush (43) kept asking his dad, Bush (41) "are we there yet, are we there yet?"

Barack Obama?  He'd end up paying for the parking every time. 

The new guy always pays.