The voices of both Barack Obama and John McCain are heard in FOX's World Series intro (Game 1 starts tonight at 8:00 ET).
Here's a video and transcript of it (hat-tip to the sports blog Awful Announcing).
Transcript, for the digitally challenged (I believe the main narrator is Michael Douglas, but I'm not sure):
NARRATOR: Throughout our history, this nation has faced times of peril. But standing by our side as it does tonight is baseball. When our young nation was divided against itself, the bleeding battlefields often gave way to this game.
OBAMA: "It received its baptism in the bloody days of our Nation's direst danger ... when soldiers, North and South, were striving to forget their foes ..." -- Albert Spalding
NARRATOR: When depression struck down the roaring 20's, Americans faced a frigidly bleak and uncertain future.
McCAIN: "Next to religion, baseball has furnished a greater impact on American life than any other institution." -- President Hoover
***FDR's day of infamy quote played***
NARRATOR: A month after speaking these words with our country on the threshold of a war unlike anything mankind had seen, it was a basic letter which underlined the need for something normal.
OBAMA: "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going." -- President Roosevelt's Green Light Letter
NARRATOR: 16 years before he marched in Washington with Dr. King, it was a baseball player who showed the nation the definition of courage.
McCAIN: "He was a freedom rider before there were freedom rides" -- Dr. Martin Luther King on Jackie Robinson.
(Footage of President Bush throwing the first pitch at the 2001 World Series)
NARRATOR: After a shocking attack shook this country to its core, we were afraid. But for many, one pitch on a baseball field showed us that our fears, although vivid and real, would pass.
NARRATOR: Baseball will never heal or solve our problems. When the last out is made, they still remain. But for nine innings, no matter the trouble we face, we can be reminded of all we as a nation have been through. All that is good, and all that can be.
OBAMA: "I think that both baseball
McCAIN: "and the country"
OBAMA AND McCAIN: "will endure." -- John F. Kennedy
I thought that was highly unusual for an introduction to a major sporting event. I know the election is a hot topic right now, but don't most people watch sports to get away from it all? Once the decision was made to involve the candidates, I liked the decision to have them just read famous quotes (to appear as non-political as possible).
I do find it kind of funny that one of Obama's quotes is from FDR, while one of McCain's is from President Hoover. Ouch.
As for the World Series itself, I say the Rays win in 7. It's been that kind of a year.