Where The Traditional Seventh-Inning Stretch Came From

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Transcript

00:00It's a baseball tradition, but have you always wondered the origin of the seventh inning stretch?

00:05The year was 1910. President William Howard Taft, a man of great stature and even greater

00:11circumference, attended the season opener of the Washington Senators. By the seventh inning,

00:17he decreed something like, my fellow Americans, the presidential posterior is completely numb.

00:24So by executive order, I shall now stand. And he did. The rest of the crowd stood out of

00:29respect. And that, as the story goes, is how the seventh inning stretch was born. However,

00:35it seems the tradition goes back even further. In the late 1800s, brother Jasper was the guy that

00:40brought baseball to Manhattan College. And he noticed that spectators became restless as the

00:45game progressed. So perhaps in an act of divine inspiration, he stopped play and encouraged all

00:51the fans to stand up and stretch for a bit. And he continued to do that for every game.

00:55Always wondered. Stream it now, wherever you get your podcasts.