WASHINGTON — President Calvin Coolidge wasn’t as big a baseball fan as his wife, Grace. But even Silent Cal got swept up in the excitement of the Washington Senators’ unexpectedly successful season in 1924. After the team clinched the American League pennant, the players swung by the White House to shake hands and pose for pictures with Coolidge.

It was the beginning of what would eventually become a tradition of victorious athletes visiting the president, and it’ll continue on Friday when Joe Biden hosts the championship men’s and women’s college basketball teams.

But what started as a nonpartisan rite of passage has become increasingly tangled up in politics, a shift that some peg to Bill Clinton’s presidency.