Talking Points 12/16

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Talking Points isn’t just hanging out in sports bars and basketball gyms.

We got culture, too. Honest.

Why just a couple of days ago we sidled up next to former First Lady Laura Bush. She was in town as the featured speaker at the 2010 Fort Vancouver Regional Library Foundation’s “Authors & Illustrators” dinner and silent auction. And she even did a little sports talk.

At one point she was discussing the sobering aftermath of 9/11.

Her husband was about to throw out the first pitch at a New York Yankees game. Terrorism was still on everyone’s mind and the president would be the only one on the infield.

Everyone — understandably — was a bit edgy. But Mrs. Bush said Yankee great Derek Jeter tried to break the tension. Jeter was talking to the president right before he went out to throw the pitch. And he asked the president if he was going to throw it from the mound. Talking Points knows, of course, that plenty of people who do this, throw in front of the mound to better assure they make it to the plate.

So Jeter challenged the president.

“Be a man, throw it from the mound,” Mrs. Bush recalled he said.

Hey, not everyone could tell the president to “Be a man!”

According to Mrs. Bush, the president did indeed throw it from the mound. She went on to say “the president said” he threw a strike.

Now Mrs. Bush also suggested her husband might be getting a little tired of doing what ex-presidents have to do. Like taking out the trash and picking his socks up off the floor.

And since the Yankees couldn’t land free agent Cliff Lee and since the president can throw strikes, Talking Points is wondering if Mr. Bush is available.