Presidents Race race still began with an animation on the video board: the four cartoon presidents dashed through Washington, D.C., and headed towards RFK Stadium. Immediately after disappearing from the screen, the costumed live-action presidents emerged from the right field corner as 10-foot-tall (3-meter-tall) men with large caricature foam heads. The presidents bolted out from right field and down the first base line, past the visitors' dugout, and to the finish line by home plate. Beginning in the 2007 season, the animated lead-in was replaced with a taped video of the caricature-headed presidents running from the White House, around various Washington landmarks,
Historical rankings of presidents of the United States former director of the University of Maryland's African American Leadership Institute, stated that Presidents ranked by how each one balanced the interests of majority interests and the interests of excluded groups was practical in respect to American debate on racial politics. Presidents have traditionally been ranked on personal qualities and their leadership ability to solve problems that move the nation in a positive direction. Walters stated there was a qualitative difference between white and African American intellectuals in evaluating presidents. In the 1996 "New York Times" poll by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 31 white historians and one black historian ranked