Berlin taz | Perhaps the Dodgers’ triumph in the Baseball World Series last Wednesday was not only the eighth title win for the LA club since 1957, but also a clear sign of the outcome of the US presidential election. As pollster Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight noted on
Unsurprisingly, only Kamala Harris’ followers responded positively to Rakich’s tweet. Trump, on the other hand, must have been very upset with him; after all, he is not only considered a big baseball fan, but also almost became a professional in his youth. In a contribution to the 2004 book “The Games Do Count: America’s Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports” by Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, Trump was one of more than 80 celebrities to write about his relationship with sports.
Actually, he emphasized, he was supposed to become a professional baseball player: “I was captain of the baseball team at the New York Military Academy (NYMA).” He trained just as hard as everyone else, “but I had great talent!” Trump remembers in His text also refers to “the first time I read my name in the newspaper”. That was in 1964, in his last year at NYMA. At that time he hit the decisive home run in a game against Cornwall High School. The headline at the time in the local newspaper, which Trump did not name, was: “Trump hits home run and wins the game.” For him it was “just great” and “actually even better than winning the match”.
But Trump is not necessarily known for his love of facts and truths, especially not when it comes to his own life achievements. Accordingly, over time there were always journalists who tried to research the man’s baseball career. It’s probably not easy, because his former trainers have since died. Classmates’ memories are also often shaped by their political views. For example, one who regularly spoke in interviews about Trump’s great achievements as a pitcher had never played with him on the college team.
Fact check in vain
The sports journalist Leander Schaerlaeckens was already in 2020 in an article for Slate.com concluded that Trump’s baseball memories are not very accurate. In the archives of the only two local newspapers that regularly covered college sports at NYMA, he found no article with the headline so enthusiastically quoted by Trump in the book. But that’s not all: Trump’s team didn’t play Cornwall High School once in the entire 1964 season, nor did it play the year before.
An anecdote the future president liked to tell about the end of his professional ambitions probably doesn’t correspond to the facts either: Trump wrote that a trial training session he completed with another player named Willie McCovey convinced him that the real estate industry was probably the more suitable job alternative for him be. Willie McCovey is still one of the baseball legends today.
Being a significantly worse player than the later Hall of Famer in a direct comparison should not have been a disgrace, even for a proven egomaniac like Trump. However, the sporting encounter between the two men could not have taken place: McCovey was already playing as a first baseman in Major League Baseball and his active career lasted from 1959 to 1980.
A professional career was unthinkable, ridiculous. He just couldn’t hit
Keith Law, former manager of the Toronto Blue Jays
After all, a NYMA coach named Theodore Dobias remembered the young baseball player Donald J. Trump very positively and was forced by him to take part in a telephone conference with a journalist in 2016, shortly before his death at the age of 98. According to Dobias, talent scouts from the Boston Red Sox and Phillies were watching him. However, the coach’s memories turned out to be not entirely valid because he did not coach the team on which Trump played. Baseball experts also believe it is impossible that the scouts from the big clubs were interested in athletes from a small educational institution; former classmates never noticed scouts. In addition, there are no references to Trump in the archives of the two clubs.
Ridiculous statistics
In addition, the statistics of the player Trump do not speak for him. Keith Law, former manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, told journalist Lyndon Suvanto that a professional career was out of the question, “unthinkable, ridiculous. He batted an average of .138, he just couldn’t hit, that’s for sure.”
A school friend remembered this a few years ago New York Daily News remembering a walk with her classmate at the time many decades ago. Trump asked her to tell how she experienced one of his best games. The young woman then recapitulated the course of the match: NYMA was three points behind at the time, but Trump managed a moderate hit that neither the third baseman nor the left fielder could reach in time.
All four of our runs were in and we won.” This view of things left the current presidential candidate slightly incensed, insisting that he had “hit the ball out of the stadium” in that game. Which, like so many things, cannot correspond to the facts, because the match only took place on the training ground.
And now to football
After NYMA, Trump attended Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania. He didn’t play baseball there. After all, he really is a baseball fan; over the past few decades he has repeatedly tried to buy a professional team. He never made it, which was perhaps fortunate for the sport because his efforts to become an NFL team owner ended in the bankruptcy of a minor league.
In 1983, after several unsuccessful attempts to acquire a major team, he purchased the New Jersey Generals, which played in the US Football League (USFL). With a lot of money, he initially tried to sign the best college players and popular NFL professionals. And he remained true to his business style: He simply ignored the USFL’s specified salary limits and did not negotiate discreetly with NFL players, but rather leaked all the details to the tabloids during secret discussions. At the same time, his actual target was still the NFL, whose officials he treated in business meetings with such arrogance and self-absorption that then-commissioner Leslie Schupak finally had enough and told him: “As long as I or my heirs have anything to do with the league, you will never owned an NFL team.”
Trump immediately sought revenge. How he managed to get the USFL owners to agree to his plans for a direct confrontation with the NFL in 1986 is unclear. It should actually have been clear to the business people why the USFL was successful in the first place: it played its games in the spring during the NFL and college football break and was then contractually allowed to use the venues of its major competitors. But Trump loudly lured the league with a lawsuit against the antitrust law, which will definitely be successful and pour billions into the coffers of the club owners. In principle, Trump said, the NFL will be bankrupt after the ruling and then it will belong to the USFL.
Three dollars and a bankruptcy
In fact, USFL game schedules were changed and lawsuits filed because the NFL refused to make its stadiums available and television networks preferred to broadcast the big league matches. According to old newspaper reports, the real estate millionaire did not make a good impression on the jury during the trial; one juror later said that he appeared arrogant and cunning.
In the end, the NFL was actually convicted, but only for damages of three (actually: three) dollars. According to the court, the USFL’s financial difficulties were caused by the USFL itself through the unauthorized changes to the schedule. The league then went bankrupt and Trump lost $22 million.
By the way, the fact that Trump was probably not a great baseball talent didn’t stop him from playing in March 2023. posing unsportsmanlike with a bat – as part of a multi-part tantrum on social media following the indictment against him over hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels; In a photo montage he aimed the baseball bat at the head of New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
