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“The nostalgia is bubbling within me,” Reagan told the ballplayers, “and I may have to be dragged out of here because of all of the stories that are coming up in my mind.” He went on to say that because he was as superstitious as any player, he had refused to mention on air that the Chicago Cubs had to win the last twenty-one games of the 1935 season to capture the pennant. “So there I was,” he said, “a broadcaster, and never mentioned once in the 21 games, and I was getting as up-tight as they were, and never mentioned the fact that they were at 16, they were at 17, and that they hadn’t lost a game because I was afraid I’d jinx them.

“But, anyway,” Reagan added, “they did it, and it’s still in the record books.”

It was a great story, and it was mostly true. The Cubs did win twenty-one games in a row that year, but they lost their final two games of the season and still finished four games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals. When telling stories, Reagan often blended truth and fiction. He was especially fond of happy endings typical of classic Hollywood movies—and no good old-fashioned baseball motion picture would end with a streaking club losing its last two games of the season.

Three days after the Hall of Fame lunch, sitting at the cabinet table with the Hispanic leaders, Reagan spent a minute or two joking with the reporters in the room and praising their performances at the Gridiron dinner. The journalists laughed and were then quickly shooed away.

Ten minutes later, his ceremonial duties finished, Reagan headed back to the Oval Office to prepare for the day’s big speech.

* * *

THAT SAME MORNING, Vice President George H. W. Bush was comfortably settled in Air Force Two and flying toward Texas, where he was to deliver a pair of speeches urging passage of the president’s economic policies. Politicking for his boss on a one-day trip to his home state was a typical task for a vice president, but it was still somewhat surprising that George Bush was the vice president making this trip. Only a year earlier, Bush and Reagan had been locked in a fierce and sometimes bitter fight for the Republican nomination.

As became clear during the primary campaign, the two men could not have been more different. Bush, fifty-six, was a child of privilege: the son of a U.S. senator, he had attended an exclusive prep school and graduated from Yale University. He wore Brooks Brothers suits, button-down shirts, and a watch with a preppy striped band. He kept in shape by jogging, not by riding horses or cutting wood. Unlike Reagan, Bush had seen combat in World War II. As a navy pilot, he flew fifty-eight missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, he entered the oil business in Texas, made a lot of money, and then entered public service. He’d held a number of high-profile government posts over the years: congressman from the Houston area; ambassador to the United Nations; U.S. envoy to China; director of the CIA. And in 1980, with the help of his good friend Jim Baker, now the White House chief of staff, Bush had almost succeeded in snatching the nomination from Reagan, who had begun the race as the clear front-runner.

Reagan’s campaign had started sluggishly. Bush weakened him, touting his own experience and “stamina”—a not-so-veiled jab at Reagan’s age—and later attacking the former California governor’s fiscal policies as “voodoo economics.” After losing the Iowa caucuses to Bush, Reagan assailed the Texan for being too liberal, criticizing his opponent’s positions on abortion, gun rights, and taxes. By the time Bush finally conceded, both candidates held dim views of each other, which made it all the more surprising when Reagan, somewhat reluctantly, tapped Bush to be his running mate. During the run-up to the election, however, they campaigned well together, and over the past several months they seemed to have become a team. Bush had come to genuinely respect Reagan, and the president often relied on Bush’s expertise in foreign affairs and national security