Yahoo has the report:

President Bush had enough to worry about — like not flubbing the first pitch in front of a crowd that might not exactly be his biggest fans anyway.

So before the game, when a couple of Atlanta Braves gave him a team jersey and suggested he wear it to throw out the first pitch at Nationals Park, Bush laughed. Uh, no thanks, guys. Might as well put on a sign that says “Boo me.”

“I’m not going to give them any excuses,” Bush said of the 40,000-plus people gathered for the opening of Washington’s gleaming baseball stadium.

Over in the Nationals’ swank clubhouse, general manager Jim Bowden told the president he expected him to throw a strike. More pressure.

“Shhh,” Bush responded. “Keep expectations low.”

By the time Bush emerged onto the baseball field, he had ditched the gray sports coat and popped out of the home dugout in a red Nationals jacket. He was greeted by plenty of loud jeers, but also determined cheers, as if the fans in both camps were trying to outduel each other.

The video supports that:

I hear a smattering of boos, but I hear a lot of applause and cheers, too. At the most, I’d say it was about 50/50 (some of the comments over at Hot Air seem to think the same thing).

Of course, the nutroots think this indicates something. Given the fact that D.C. is one of the bluest cities in America, I’d hardly call it a surprise that some people booed him. In fact, I’m surprised it wasn’t worse. And it’s certainly not like this is the first President to be booed while throwing out the first pitch.

But all that is a moot point to the left. He’s damned if he does, damned if he don’t.

Why the fascination with this from the left? Because they think it proves something. They think it proves they are right and Bush is a bad President. As if.

Look, I’ve been supportive of the President over the last seven years, but he’s done some things that I couldn’t support (like immigration “reform” and Harriet Miers, for example). But overall, I think he’s done a pretty darn good job considering the hand he was dealt. I think he was right to go after al Qaeda, I think he was right to go after Saddam, and I think he’s right to stay in Iraq until the mission is complete. The left, not so much. They just want to hide here in the USA and slap a summons on someone who blows up a couple of buildings and kills 3000 people. To them, it’s not an act of war, it’s a criminal investigation. And we saw just how well that worked during the eight years under Clinton.

No, Bush is never going to get their support on anything he does, and he knows it. From the moment Algore conceded the election in 2000, the meme was to oppose Bush in everything he did and to make sure his Presidency fails (for example, the left AND the press talked us into a mini-recession, and they continue to try and talk up to this day, hoping he’d be hamstrung by it). That, and they also want to get even for Clinton’s impeachment.

Just think about that for a second. When Bush took office, one of the first things he did was reach out to the Democrats. What’d they do? Yeah, they basically told him to get bent. But yet, after seven years in office, the left wants us to believe it was Bush telling them to get lost. Oh, he is now, make no mistake, but he wasn’t at the beginning. In fact, he really didn’t start until the last year or two. And heck, why wouldn’t he after all this time? He should have been doing it from the beginning (see the above reasons).

I think it speaks volumes that Bush knew he was going to be booed, yet he still went and climbed the mound and threw out the first pitch. A big “f*** ‘em”, and why not? He has less than a year in office, why should he hold back? Personally, I can hardly wait until he’s left the White House, just so he can finally unload on his critics the way a sitting President can’t. Should be some pretty good entertainment.

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