President Donald Trump was apparently too busy with repealing and replacing his predecessor’s health care plan, tax reform and making questionable decisions on the environment to do what 17 of his predecessors did during their terms in office.

Fret not, baseball fans. Trump has three more chances to throw out the ceremonial first pitch on opening day.

Having heard nothing about Trump’s plans for this season’s opener, I called the White House last week and asked for the press office. This was the conversation:

“White House press office.”

I introduced myself and asked, “Does the president have plans to throw out the first ball at an opening game next week?

“That has not been confirmed or announced,” the young woman replied and started to hang up abruptly.

Wait a minute, I said before she could hang up. You haven’t answered my question, which I repeated.

“We have nothing to report on that matter,” she said.

Now you’ve answered my question, I said.

I called the press office again Thursday and was told to send an e-mail, which I did.

A response came from an assistant press secretary: “Hi Murray,” Lindsay Walters wrote. “The President will not be throwing out the first pitch.”

She offered no explanation or reason for Trump’s decision. I subsequently saw something about a schedule conflict, but that’s the stock answer when an important person wants to get out of doing something.

Maybe a baseball game and the first pitch are simply too insignificant in the life of a president who has to deal with alleged immigrant terrorists, who may be on his doorsteps.

When William Howard Taft initiated the practice of throwing out the first ball in 1910, neither the word terrorist nor the concept of terrorism existed. Whether Trump was concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack at Nationals Park I don’t know, but concern over the possibility of an attack or an assassination attempt is not fantasy.

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner, told me about it in a telephone conversation last week.

“John McMullen has a wonderful collection of those pictures,” Vincent said of the late Houston owner’s collection of pictures of presidents throwing first pitches. “When I was commissioner, he was very energetic about wanting more of those pictures taken. He wanted presidents to go to opening day to add to that set.

“But he found out, he told me, that the Secret Service didn’t want presidents sitting in the stands opening day wherever it was. The White House, I think, was willing to cooperate with him, but the Secret Service was very difficult. He didn’t ask me to do anything.”

McMullen was disappointed, Vincent said, adding, “He really made an effort to get them to carry on with that tradition. There’s a box right on the field. I can see why the Secret Service didn’t want that. It’s too close.

“The Secret Service is always in conflict with the president. The president wants to be more accessible and more friendly and more political. The Secret Service people always want to be more restrictive.”

The former commissioner added that the Secret Service has become more restrictive as the years have progressed. “There’s a legitimate reason for the Secret Service to be concerned,” Vincent said.

As for McMullen’s pictures, I am very familiar with them. They adorn a wall in my office, a gift years ago from McMullen, a man I grew fond of even though we disagreed on most baseball issues.

Vincent, who had similar views of and feelings for McMullen, recalled another type of incident with the president on the field. The president was the first George Bush, and the incident occurred at the All-Star game in Toronto.

“Bush 1 was on the field in 1991 when I had DiMaggio and Williams there,” Vincent related. “That’s when John Henry” – Williams’ son – “asked the president to take off his warmup jacket because his father didn’t want to go out with anything but a sports shirt.

“The president came over to me and said, ‘Fay, who’s that young man?’ I said that’s Ted’s son. He said, ‘He just came over to me and asked me to take my jacket off when I go out to throw out the pitch.’ He said, ‘I can’t say this to him, but underneath is this big flak jacket that the Secret Service makes me wear when I go out on the field in public view.’ He said, ‘Would you explain it to him?

“I went over to him and said, ‘John Henry, you asked the president to take his jacket off?’ He said, ‘Yeah, my old man doesn’t want to go out with a jacket on. He thinks it’s ridiculous. I told the president my father would like him to take the jacket off.’ I said, ‘John Henry, you don’t tell the president what to wear. Underneath it he’s got a big flak jacket on. Did you know that?’ He said no, he didn’t say that. I said John Henry, you can’t tell the president what to do. Don’t you see that?”

Then there was Ted Turner, whose Atlanta Braves played in the World Series in 1991, when Vincent was commissioner.

“Turner always wanted to have Jimmy Carter involved,” Vincent related, speaking of the former president and son of Georgia. “Ted had made a promise to Carter that if the Braves were in the World Series Carter would be invited to throw out the first pitch.”

Vincent, however, opposed the idea of having politicians involved in the first-ball ceremony and told Turner that Carter could not throw the first pitch.

“What am I supposed to do?” Vincent said Turner asked him.

Disinvite him, Vincent said he told Turner.

As for Trump, it’s not as if he can’t throw a baseball. Along with the McMullen pictures, my office wall has two pictures of Trump throwing a baseball. My son found them on the Internet and added them to my collection.

In one of the pictures, Trump is wearing a New York Yankees warmup jacket, indicating that it was probably taken the day I met Trump at Yankee Stadium. Recognizing my name, he told me had been “reading” me since he was in college.

WAITING FOR KANG, NOT GODOT
Players are suspended for violating Major League Baseball’s policies on performance-enhancing drugs and domestic violence, but drunk driving is not viewed in a similar light. Officials defend their position by explaining that alcohol is legal. What they don’t add is that drunk driving is not legal.

The double standard comes to mind because as the 2017 season begins the Pittsburgh Pirates are awaiting the arrival of their Korean third basemen, Jung Ho Kang.

The 30-year-old remains at home in Seoul, South Korea and has been placed on the M.L.B. restricted list because he has not been able to obtain a visa for travel to the United States. He has been unable to obtain a visa because he received an eight-month suspended sentence last month following conviction in December of a third DUI charge since 2009.

Kang, who in his second major league season hit 21 home runs in 318 at-bats, has also been accused of sexually assaulting a woman when the Pirates played in Chicago last June.

If Kang receives a visa and comes to the United States, he is expected to be delayed further while the commissioner’s office investigates the assault charges against him. It is not clear how the commissioner’s office will handle the DUI conviction and other DUI charges.

The DUI charges will be nothing new for Frank Coonelly, the Pirates’ president and former labor executive under Rob Manfred, now the commissioner.

In 2011 Coonelly was arrested in a Pittsburgh suburb and charged with four counts of DUI – one count each of drunk driving, driving the wrong way, careless driving and driving with a blood-alcohol level of at least twice the state’s legal limit of .08.

Coonelly was given an eight-month suspended sentence and ordered to enter a program for first-time offenders. Under terms of the sentence, if Coonelly did not incur a second offense in the next five years, his record would be cleared.

The five-year period is just about up, and it is not known if Coonelly has committed a second DUI offense.