Chris Archer learns you can’t just hand a glove to President Obama

In the moments before the Tampa Bay Rays would play the Cuban National Team in a historic exhibition game in front of both U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro, Rays ace Chris Archer learned an important lesson.

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You can’t just hand something to the president. Not in public like that and certainly not on a day when a terrorist attack rocked Belgium.

Archer’s motives were pure: He wanted to give Obama a baseball glove. Prior to that, he’d spent some time talking to both Obama and his wife, Michelle, from the field. Then he tried to pass a glove into the stands, but that didn’t work as well as it would have if Archer were handing it to you or me. 

The glove, as we later learned, belonged to Rays starter Matt Moore, who was warming up and wasn’t able to shake the president’s hand before the game like his teammates. So Moore asked Archer to give Obama one of his gloves. 

As you can imagine, various permissions needed to be granted before the glove could get passed into the stands. It needed to be inspected too. But it got through, live TV caught that part. And Archer said Obama thanked him. 

[Elsewhere: Kyle Schwarber saves the day for young ballplayer with broken mitt]

The glove story aside, Archer was thrilled to get even a moment with Obama. Archer has established himself as one of the most well-spoken and insightful players in the game, a reputation that wasn’t lost on the president. While most players got a simple handshake from Obama, Archer hung around and chatted a bit longer.

“He told me he appreciated how thoughtful I was in my interviews,” Archer would later say during the broadcast. “Probably the highest compliment I’ve had in my life.”

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz