Summers Makes Fenway Debut

After half a year of nonstop scrutiny and discussion of his leadership, University President Lawrence H. Summers threw a changeup last Friday night.

From the mound at Fenway Park, Summers chucked a ceremonial first pitch that had absolutely nothing to do with women in science or agitated professors. The toss reached home plate but strayed low and outside: a ball in effect, if not in intent.

For Summers, who has generally avoided high-profile appearances since January, the brief ballpark outing surely offered welcome relief from the past semester’s tribulations.

Not that the pitch didn’t cause him considerable anxiety. Summers practiced his delivery two nights before his Fenway debut in a private session with Harvard assistant baseball coach Matt Hyde.

“He’s got some competitiveness in him,” Hyde said of Summers. “He wanted to be good at this, or at least he wanted to make sure he didn’t embarrass himself.”

He didn’t. Of the three “first” pitches at Friday night’s sold-out game, only Summers’ made it all the way to the plate. An elderly woman declined to throw the ball, and the manager of a CVS store bounced his toss.

Summers was booed by Red Sox fans as he walked out to the mound, although their jeers seemed to indicate a lack of confidence in the University more than in its president. And, for what it’s worth, the crowd at Fenway also booed the cast of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” when they threw out the first pitch in June.

“I expect I’ll have a career where it’s going to be years and years between pitching performances,” said Summers, who threw for his Little League team in suburban Philadelphia before giving up the sport at age 12. He’s been a tennis player ever since.

That made his practice session with Hyde all the more important. “He was going to throw from behind the pitcher’s rubber like it was the baseline in tennis, so I had to get him straightened out,” Hyde recalled. “I told him they’d probably have him throw from 45 feet or something. But Larry said, ‘No, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it from the full distance.’”

“You learn a lot about a person when he puts on a glove,” Hyde said.

Summers, who was invited to throw out the first pitch as recognition for Harvard’s work with the BELL Foundation, which provides educational opportunities to low-income children, donned a Red Sox cap for the occasion. In an interview, though, he confessed he still harbors a bit of allegiance to the Philadelphia Phillies, his childhood favorite, and the Baltimore Orioles, his team of choice while in Washington, D.C., during the 1990s.

“But my primary affinity at this point is to the Red Sox,” Summers said. His team defeated the New York Yankees that night at Fenway, 17-1.

This month has offered Summers something of a break after the school year closed with questions about his job security. He marked four full years at Harvard on July 1 and promptly headed to Colorado for the week-long Aspen Ideas Festival, an academic equivalent of Sundance or Cannes.

The celebrity-heavy lineup of speakers in Aspen featured ten Harvard affiliates, including former University President Derek C. Bok, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel, and Elisa New, a professor of English and Summers’ longtime partner.

Speaking onstage with MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews, Summers noted with approval a recent influx of women into the workforce, according to a report in New York magazine. Noting the irony, Summers reportedly said, “Spare me the wisecrack, Chris.”

—Jane V. Evans contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.