The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of the American Athlete

by Ryan A. Swanson

“Just in my present mood I would rather have Uncle Sam declare war on England and clean her up rather than have one of her citizens beat us out of Base Ball. Yours truly. Abner Graves.”

It has become much more global.

But Roosevelt remained fixated on the daily conflicts. He could no more turn off his impulse to engage in every conversation and every debate than he could let pass by a tempting dish at the dinner table. It had always been this appetite—for food yes, but also ideas, debates, conflict, knowledge, stimulation—that powered Roosevelt’s engine.

The more Roosevelt thought about Morgan and Fish, the more he deemed them victims rather than criminals. Here were two students “emphatically engaged in doing work that was of benefit to the whole college,” Roosevelt wrote to Eliot. And how did their university provide support for such work? Had Harvard kept up its end of the ill-defined student-athlete bargain? Not even close.

Translation: it was Harvard’s responsibility to make sure that its students participating in events on

behalf of the university had the resources necessary to keep up with their schoolwork.

But perhaps this isn’t a surprise. Nixon was no Roosevelt; his head isn’t on a giant rock in South Dakota. The NCAA doesn’t award a trophy annually in memory of Nixon.

The men were like Roosevelt. All middle-aged white men, most with mustaches. The group had the look of former athletes. The shoulders were still strong, the backs still rigid for the most part, but cheeks had grown rounder, the stomachs thicker, and hair thinner as the years progressed.

This ascension by a black man to the pinnacle of athletics rattled white America. His reign caused race riots and lynchings. For Roosevelt, Johnson represented a last-minute shift in the Strenuous Life experiment. Johnson challenged the racial bias inherent in Roosevelt’s ideas about athletics. And if nothing else, Johnson abruptly dethroned Roosevelt as America’s most talked about boxer.

The dichotomy of early American athletics.

Here was the crux of the matter for Roosevelt: there was a forward race (whites) and a backward one (blacks). He favored the idea of equality, he even fought for it on an individual level, but he did not spend much time considering structural solutions that might ensure it.

Things got increasingly complicated. The black soldiers refused to break ranks and speak with the investigators. With good reason, they did not trust their own Army to treat them fairly.

Fair.

“We are hero worshippers, every mother’s son of us; personal superiority is our fetish,” Beach wrote. And thus Roosevelt’s connection: “Only yesterday we offered such a welcome as the world has never known to a fighter. No Roman emperor,” Beach explained, did “ever review such a pageant of honor as Theodore Roosevelt.”

Fair assessment.

Johnson was fluid and powerful; Jeffries was crouched and tentative. Johnson sent Jeffries sprawling through the ropes in the final round. The film oozed with physical domination. And these “fight pictures” made Johnson, according to one film historian, “in essence, the first black movie star.”

But the goodness of fighting in any sort of public arena was now gone. “The betting and gambling upon the result,” Roosevelt scolded—failing to mention that gambling had nearly always been part of the prizefighting world—“are thoroughly unhealthy, and the moving picture part of the proceedings has introduced a new method of money-getting and of demoralization.”

It has always seemed to me that in life there are two ways of achieving success, or, for the matter of that, of achieving what is commonly called greatness. One is to do that which can only be done by the man of exception and extraordinary abilities. Of course this means that only one man can do it, and it is a very rare kind of success or of greatness…But most of us can do the ordinary things, which, however, most of us do not do. —Theodore Roosevelt

This is a good quote.

When not relaxing on the golf course, Taft went to baseball games. The contrast here is too simple to take very seriously but too tempting to ignore.

The nation stood at the precipice of what seemed to be a generation-defining war. If there was a time that the nation’s newspapers should have ignored an old ex-president, it was 1917. The nation’s future lay in the hands of its fittest and strongest. Its draft-eligible. This was the time for new leaders. Roosevelt had been out of the White House for nearly a decade. And yet the press assembled at Cooper’s Farm.

The case can be made (and has been) that Roosevelt was a misogynistic, racist, war-mongering tyrant. Despite his blemishes, however, there is a Roosevelt, caricatured as ably by Robin Williams in the film Night at the Museum as anywhere else, which still sells. The Strenuous Life still draws attention.

Then perhaps a visit to a youth soccer tournament. After paying $20 to park, Roosevelt would walk to the edge of the long green pitch, goals and kids (wow, so many girls!) and collapsible chairs and umbrellas as far as the eye can see. He’d chat with a father wearing his daughter’s team colors. “You gotta play club, man. It’s the only way for your daughter to get a scholarship.”

And therein is perhaps the biggest change in the American sports landscape. Girls and women have joined their male counterparts in almost every conceivable athletic venue. Well, with the exception of those uniquely American games: football and baseball.

Ouch.

On some level, comparing oneself to Roosevelt is a recipe for disaster. Roosevelt won elections. He graduated from Harvard and wrote dozens of books. He penned thousands of letters to his children. He charged up hills and won a Nobel Peace Prize. The rest of us? We’re just trying to pick the kids up on time and make sure our emails have their attachments.

Lol, true!

Col. Theodore Roosevelt, Most Strenuous American is Called by Death Angel. Roosevelt Loved Athletics. Roosevelt’s Strenuous, Plucky Career Runs Scale of American Statesmanship and Manhood. Roosevelt Liked the Punch. Hit hard in Athletic Game as in Everything Else.