Lucky for President Obama he can set his own schedule. Rather than focus on what’s wrong with the Department of Veterans Affairs and how to fix it and prevent more veterans from dying, or deal with any of the messes his administration has created, he’s focusing his attention on sports.

Facing angry veterans, an uphill climb for his party in this year’s elections and a possible sanctions war with Russia, President Barack Obama is turning to a time-tested safe harbor for U.S. presidents: sports.

Obama is making a week of it, celebrating games large and small. A day after feting the National Football League champion Seattle Seahawks at the White House, Obama was at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, today to promote tourism and economic development.

He started the week by dropping in on co-ed Little League players at a neighborhood recreation field in Washington, tossing a ball and posing for photos. (Read More)

It’s not all sports, all the time, though. Obama’s still finding time to squeeze in some fundraising. You know, priorities.

*Just as a side note, the local news here in upstate NY has been hyping the presidential visit all day. They began this morning and haven’t stopped since. At lunch time they treated us to shots of the barricade outside the Baseball Hall of Fame that’s closed for the day. Then we got a shot of Air Force One on the tarmac at Rome AFB. Later we got to hear the newscasters gush over just about every word he said. I finally had to turn it off. I only wanted to get the weather forecast to see if there’s a chance for our kids’ games tonight.

The gushing wasn’t limited to the local media either. Check out this tweet from a Bloomberg reporter:

The smile on #Obama's face as he grips #BabeRuth's bat makes one wonder what he's contemplating… http://t.co/7aYevzhOSu

— Margaret Talev (@margarettalev) May 22, 2014

That’s some hard-hitting journalism right there.