FUNNY SPORTS QUOTES \ Source: taft.stretching-it.com

SPORTS ANECDOTES
President William Howard Taft
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Hacking It: Presidential Sports
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Golf was a pastime, refuge, and passion forTaft. After receiving a group of contentious congressmen with whom he disagreed, Taft said, "They have my last word, and now I want to show my scorn for further negotiations by spending the afternoon on the golf links."
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A satirist wrote that Taft would be a good golfer, "Were it not for his figure which, unfortunately, has a tendency to get in the way of his stroke..."
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On being presented with a golf club,"eucalyptus wood, gold mounted," Taft described the essence of golf:
"I don’t know of any game that is so provocative of profanity as golf. I don’t know any game that makes one so ashamed of his profanity."
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The golfing President: from the Washington Star
"Mr. President, how do you like the new club-house?" asked Major Butt, as they approached the Chevy Chase Country Club.
"Excellent," replied the President. "It is the finest example of early penitentiary colonial architecture I have ever seen."
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Taft is credited with being the first President to throw out the first baseball at a game and to have initiated the "seventh inning stretch."
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He threw out "strike one" at the opening of the season in 1910. The seventh-inning stretch came about when Taft joined the crowd by rising during the "lucky seventh" at a game in Chicago where it was reported, "Mr. Taft received many hearty cheers when he stood up with the rest of the fans at the beginning of the ‘lucky seventh.’"
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When he became President, Taft hardly knew the game. It all started when Captain Butt arranged for him to attend a game at Washington in the Spring of 1909. "I thought it would be a popular thing for him to appear at one of the opening games," Butt wrote. Taft agreed to go so long as it didn’t interfere with his afternoon horseback ride. And he loved it!
Following a call that offended the home team fans, Butt was heard to say to the President, "No Sir, they never kill the umpire till the seventh inning."