{"id":3867,"date":"2006-07-24T15:32:08","date_gmt":"2006-07-24T20:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2006\/07\/24\/ceremonial-participation-in-professional-sports\/"},"modified":"2022-01-30T13:01:31","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T19:01:31","slug":"ceremonial-participation-in-professional-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2006\/07\/24\/ceremonial-participation-in-professional-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"Ceremonial Participation in Professional Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to the radio this morning as someone was describing his wife&#8217;s throwing of the first pitch in a Triple-A baseball game this weekend. I became curious about this odd tradition and while my most concerted research efforts (in the form of a single Google search) didn&#8217;t turn up a definitive answer as to how this ceremonial tradition was started, I did find that the tradition of asking the <acronym title=\"President of the US\">POTUS<\/acronym> to throw the Opening Day First Pitch <a title=\"Baseball Hall of Fame\" href=\"http:\/\/www.baseballhalloffame.org\/history\/2004\/040330.htm\">began in 1910<\/a>, when President Taft hurled one to Walter Johnson.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting tradition, and I can&#8217;t think of another mainstream sport that has it. American football allows a celebrity coin-tosser at the beginning of some big games, but that&#8217;s not really a part of the game itself. I suppose the Indy 500 comes close, with a celebrity driving the pace car ahead of the competitors, leading them into the first lap of that auto race.<\/p>\n<p>I think other sports should consider starting similar traditions. Here are my suggestions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Golf: the ceremonial drive from the first tee box<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Football: the ceremonial opening kick-off<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Basketball: the ceremonial tossing of the opening jump ball<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Tennis: the ceremonial first serve<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Hockey: the ceremonial dropping of the puck for the opening face-off<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Cricket: the ceremonial confused look about what the heck is the point of this game<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Bowling: the ceremonial drinking of the first pitcher of beer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Curling: the ceremonial first yawn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Soccer: the ceremonial opening head butt, resulting red card, and national disgrace<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Baseball shouldn&#8217;t be the only professional sport with a ceremonial first something-or-other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-plain-silly","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6632,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions\/6632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}