FIRST FAN:

Once when George and Barbara Bush were taking in a game in what became their regular seats behind home plate at Minute Maid Park, Drayton McLane, who owned the Astros at the time, threw out a question.

"George," he asked, "what was your favorite day at the White House?"

Bush smiled and said he wasn't sure there'd been a single one. However, a couple days later, McLane received a package.

Inside was a large framed photograph of Bush standing between Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams in the Rose Garden. The photo was autographed by all three men, and Bush had attached a note:

Drayton,

You asked about my favorite day at the White House. This was it.

-- George

McLane cherishes that photograph because he believes it -- and the story behind it -- speak volumes about the 41st president of the United States.

"Here's what's amazing about that," McLane said. "President Bush said he was so nervous the day those two guys visited the White House."  [...]

Bush became a favorite son of Texas A&M and made frequent appearances at Aggie games. And some at the school believe Bush played a significant role in the women's basketball team winning the 2011 National Championship.

"Here's the story," former A&M athletics director Bill Byrne said. "President Bush and Barbara would sometimes sit in a small suite I had at our home football games.

"It was not long after we'd hired Gary Blair to be our women's basketball coach, and Gary was obsessed with recruiting a player named La Toya Micheaux from the Houston area.

"Gary was trying to get her away from LSU and asked if he could bring her by my booth before a game."

La Toya is the daughter of a legendary University of Houston men's player, Larry Micheaux, a member of the Phi Slamma Jamma era of UH basketball.

"So here we are, a couple of hours before a game, and Gary nonchalantly sticks his head in the door and sees the Bushes," Byrne remembered.

George and Barbara say hello, and in walks Larry Micheaux behind Gary.

"Larry Micheaux! Phi Slamma Jamma!" Bush shouts. "What a team you guys had."

And then La Toya appears behind her father.

"And you must be Larry's daughter," Bush says. "Barbara and I have been talking about how much we're looking forward to watching you play for the Aggies."

All these years later, Bryne still laughs at the story.

"That was the end of La Toya's recruiting," he said. "There was no chance she was going to go any place else. And she opened doors for us into the Houston area we hadn't been able to open. And from her coming to Texas A&M in 2005 had to have played a role in us winning the National Championship in 2011.

"That championship raised the profile of the school in so many ways, and it's not a stretch to trace it back to George and Barbara Bush making Larry and La Toya feel special."

Byrne has another point to make.

"When the president and Barbara came to a football game, they insisted on arriving early and leaving early," Byrne said. "Because they have Secret Service protection, they didn't want to disrupt traffic.

"There were times when the game was tight in the fourth quarter, and we'd ask them to stay. No, they didn't want to disrupt anyone else from getting home." [...]

When the Washington Redskins won Super Bowl XXVI in 1992, Bush wanted to do more than honor the hometown team with the traditional Rose Garden ceremony.

So he invited the Redskins to come later in the day and to bring their families and stay over for a cookout and round of horseshoes. Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and his players and staff stayed late into the night playing a very loud, very competitive round of horseshoes.

"The horseshoe tournament came down to two Redskins against President Bush and his partner, a Secret Service agent," former Redskins and Texans general manager Charley Casserly said.

On the next-to-last throw of the night, one of the Redskins players -- possibly linebacker Monte Coleman -- made a leaner, which appeared to have won the tournament.

Bush had the final throw of the night.

"We're thinking, `Wow, there's some pressure on the president," Casserly said. "Then it hits us what we've just said. Pressure? Are you kidding me? This guy knows what real pressure is."

And?

"President Bush threw a ringer to win the tournament," Casserly said. "No one believes the story, but I was there. It happened."

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