Hoover's Opossum Brings Luck to Hyattsville Baseball Team

84 years ago, sometime in May 1929, the old Hyattsville High School baseball team lost their beloved opossum mascot. This was not good news for the squad, which was hoping to rely on their mascot for good luck as they headed into the county championships. 

They had a right to be nervous too. All year long their original possum mascot had, according to contemporary press reports, brought the Hyattsville High School athletic association an apparent bounty of victories. The 1928-1929 school year saw Hyattsville High School athletes claim repeat victories in county soccer, basketball and track and field championships by the time prep-baseball post-season arrived.

But luckily, President Herbert Hoover, known as one of the more prolific pet-owning presidents, had an extra one named Billy O'Possum. 

Around the same time that the Hyattsville High School's original opossum went missing, an opossum was caught on the grounds of the White House. Athletes from Hyattsville High School contacted the White House to inquire if the opossum could be theirs, but it was somehow determined that they were not the same. 

"The boys asked permission to take Billy back to Hyattsville to fill the place of their own vanished pet," reads a July 16, 1929 report in The Spokesman Review out of Spokane, WA.

The Library of Congress actually has at least three photos of an opossum at the Hoover-era White House. The dates of the photographs lend veracity to the Hyattsville High School story. All three were taken in May 1929, right around the time high school baseball would have to be entering the postseason. Two were taken on May 6, according to the Library of Congress. These two photos show Billy O'Possum being held by a policeman after being caught and relaxing on his White House pen. A third photo of the opossum, being held by two "unknown" men, according to the Library of Congress, was curiously taken weeks later on May 25. 

Perhaps these "unknown" men, pictured young and strapping, are Hyattsville High School athletes receiving Hoover's lucky pet, Billy O'Possum. Or perhaps they are White House staffers tasked with conveying a rather ugly looking opossum to Hyattsville.

The wording of a May 26, 1929 brief in The Chicago Daily Tribune which bears the headline "HOOVER SENDS 'POSSUM TO BOY BASEBALL TEAM", indicates it might be staffers.

"Informed by the captain of the Hyattsville High School baseball team that their 'possom mascot had run away and that another was desired, the President had the White House opossum sent to the youths," reads the report, emphasis added by me. "The president was told that every game so far had been lost because the mascot was missing."

The Daily Tribune reported that team captain William Robinson said "with the White House 'possum nothing can stop us winning now."

After winning their championship and returning the possum, The Palm Beach Post from July 14, 1929, reported that the team wrote the following letter:

"Dear President Hoover,

Please accept the hearty thanks of our association for your kindness in acceding to our request for the use of the White House o'possum as a mascot during the closing weeks of school. Having won successively the Prince George's County high school championship in soccer, baseball, basketball and track and field events, we cannot fail to appreciate the value of this little animal as a purveyor of good fortune.

Accordingly, we have resorted Billy Possum to the keeping of the White House in the hope that he will bring you full measure of good luck, trusting, however that with your kind permission, we may again be honored with his effective leadership in our athletic program next fall."

The Palm Beach Post reported that President Hoover replied with a handwritten note:

"Mr. Robert N. Venemann, Hyattsville High School, Hyattsville, Md. 

My Dear Robert:

I am glad to have your formal report on the efficiency of Billy O'possum–it will be incorporated into his service record. Precautions will be taken to maintain his health and spirits for the further needs of the Prince George's County high school teams. 

Yours faithfully,

Herbert Hoover."

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this story is that this appears to be only President Herbert Hoover's second most famous encounter with an opossum, and a distant second at that. A much more well known tale centers on President Hoover being presented with a live opossum by an illiterate mountain boy at the president's Rapidan, VA retreat on the president's birthday, according Dale C. Myer's biography of President Hoover's wife, Lou Henry Hoover: A Prototype for First Ladies. But that story is reported to have happened in August 1929, four months after Hoover's loan of Billy O'Possum to the Hyattsville High School baseball team. 

However, many elements of the Rapidan opossum story seem to be documented only in fawning press reports. I find it strange that the only pictures in the Library of Congress's internet accessible archives are of Billy O'Possum (the May opossum), and not afterward. My hunch is that the itinerant mountain boy, at least initially, brought the president a freshly killed possum to cook, not pet. Perhaps later, live possums, as indicated in numerous press reports, were brought by the boy to the animal-loving president to make the story more palatable for the public, but this is getting a bit too far into a public relations conspiracy of my own devising which goes right to the top of the Hoover administration.

Myer's book contains an amusing footnote which underscores the Hoover's love of animals: "The possum was added to the Hoover's household menagerie near the White House stables. He later escaped, but was soon recaptured by some Boy Scouts in the Maryland suburbs."

Interestingly, neither the Presidential Pet Museum nor Wikipedia lists an opossum as one of Hoover's presidential pets. Perhaps that should change?