What’s done is done.
The Dodgers traveled to the White House on Thursday to meet with President Trump for the second year in a row, following back-to-back World Series championships.
During their visit, the Dodgers had the best record in Major League Baseball with 65 wins and 38 losses. Winning three straight titles won’t be easy, but if we think they can pull off another victory in October, here are five reasons why the Dodgers shouldn’t return to the White House next year.
What is the point?
The tour has been going on for years, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have embraced the tradition with athletes from various sports.
If you want to know why I have nothing to say in 2021, when the Dodgers visit President Biden at the White House, that’s a good question.
I didn’t focus on it at the time because I think such tours are kind of ho-hum. But now we’ve had three visits in five years, and in my head, this reinforces the point that baseball players have nothing to gain from visiting. They are baseball players, and as such, there is no higher honor than winning the World Series.
I love baseball, but it’s not like these guys are astronauts, coming back from the moon.
If the Dodgers want to mark their success and honor the game of baseball in the nation’s capital, that’s fine. They should go to the Smithsonian as a group and visit the place where Jackie Robinson’s jersey is kept.
They are put at a disadvantage
As Dodgers Mookie Betts stated that he would not join his teammates, he could not win either way..
“If I go,” he said, “people will hate me. If I don’t, people will hate me.”
That’s an exaggeration, but I get his point. Dodger man Kiké Hernandez said he is not going either, explaining that he is busy with his injury.
The Dodgers should take the pressure off the players by politely declining the invitation to visit.
Besides, people like baseball because it’s an escape, a distraction, a game. You want to have a clear head as you try to remember why you willingly packed up your kids and paid $400 for dirty seats and food at Dodger Stadium to watch Kyle Tucker, at $60 million a year, torture a catcher.
You don’t want to think about the cesspool of American politics as you watch the Dodgers rally behind, win in the late innings, and inch closer to returning to the White House again next year.
They are used
The players are said to have been told that they can decide for themselves whether to go to the White House.
What they should have been told was that they were being exploited.
When the president hosts a party at the White House, there is only one reason.
A photo op.
Not for the party, but for the president.
Baseball may no longer be a national sport, but it has become part of American culture, with fans of all political stripes in every state. There’s a kind of folksy quality to the banter between the president and the footballers. He can play on them and joke with them and look like a normal guy – one of the boys.
“This is a really special team,” Trump said during a Dodger visit. “They are special winners. They are champions, and they are unbelievable.”
Yes, we knew that when they beat the Blue Jays.
Nine months ago.
Kissing the ring too much is closing
If you’re going to go, can’t you at least embarrass yourself?
Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter presented Trump with a Dodger jersey and a World Series ring at the White House. Somehow, he managed to control himself and got down on one knee and kissed the president’s ring.
“Thank you for welcoming us today, Mr. President,” said Walter. “We are proud of that team and what they have achieved, and we hope to be back here next year.”
As Maddie Lee of The Times noted, this was days after Bloomberg reported that “two insurance companies controlled by Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible financial improprieties.”
“No charges have been filed,” Lee wrote. “Representatives of the insurance company’s parent company and those from TWC Global — Walter’s business empire that controls his sports investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers — told reporters they were cooperating with the investigation.”
So that’s another problem with the Dodgers’ visit.
How can we wonder about ulterior motives?
It’s hard to keep track of who’s kissing whose ring.
Politics is inevitable
The Dodger brain trust has tried to make the White House visit a cultural exercise, not a political one.
“Like I always say, my company line, my personal line, I hope we get this invitation every year,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the visit. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. So that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”
That would not be ignorance.
Dodgers likes to make healthy, family-friendly essence. But American speech has never been more vulgar, divisive or political in my life, and I am reminded of the line, “Sleep with dogs, wake up with fleas.”
In Trump’s world, there are only two kinds of people: friends and enemies. The Dodgers are now friends, and when Venezuelan World Series hero Miguel Rojas was nominated by Trump, who launched an unprovoked attack on his country, political events were recalculated.
The White House itself has been the site of political attacks from the Dodger’s home country and immigrants from the regions of the world that are home to some of the Dodger players. Election integrity has been politicized. The Supreme Court is political. The water level in the demonstration pond has been politicized. And in a cage fight at the White House, the former first lady was humiliated.
You can’t take off your baseball uniform, put on your wedding suit, and stand there with the president, smiling and shaking hands and willingly being loved, without making a political statement.
It’s best to stick to what you know best.
And besides that.
Trump is a Yankees fan.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
