President Biden hosted the LA Dodgers, World Series champs, at the White House on Friday and recalled his own baseball glory days. The problem, however, is that one story he told may be nothing more than legend.
“I just want you to know that we have a congressional baseball game every year. In the very beginning, I used to be a center fielder and my Walter Mitty dream … Anyway, it’s a long story,” Biden began.
“My kids only remember two things that ever happened to me in my career, my boys. And they’ve met kings and queens and they’ve gone to other countries. But I played in the second Congressional baseball game at the old stadium, in the old Washington stadium,” he continued. “And I hit one off the right center field wall, bounced off the wall. I think it’s 368, or I don’t know what it is exactly now, but off the wall. And I’m rounding … anyway, to make a long story short, my kids remember that, all the rest. And guess what? Only thing I remember too. Yeah. I thought, ‘What could have been. What could have been.’”
The story was immediately fact checked by the Republican National Committee’s Zach Parkinson.
In 1975, Biden was so good he "got stuck in traffic" and didn't start
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) July 2, 2021
But he did make sure his press team reached out to Delaware's Morning News to issue a correction so everyone knew he actually "played" in the game pic.twitter.com/rSJ8drCWlm
Biden also claimed this hit came "at the old stadium" in DC (RFK)
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) July 2, 2021
Except the Congressional baseball game was played at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore for Biden's first four years in Congress
The game wasn't played at RFK again until 2005https://t.co/wb9n1lUTVC pic.twitter.com/LmAAvf5fO5
Unsurprisingly, not the first time Biden has done something like thishttps://t.co/14TGszl6pa
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) July 2, 2021
Parkinson said the White House loves to defend the president in these types of stories but in this case when Politico reached out for comment, they offered none. This, he says, is telling.
Biden team loves to push back on stuff like this, so this is the equivalent of them admitting he made it uphttps://t.co/7Jbhjuzd4Q pic.twitter.com/DXR2bGcyf2
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) July 3, 2021
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