{"id":19088,"date":"2026-07-27T18:37:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19088"},"modified":"2026-07-27T18:37:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:37:49","slug":"5-reasons-the-dodgers-should-not-go-back-to-the-white-house-again-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19088","title":{"rendered":"5 reasons the Dodgers should not go back to the White House again next year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-element=\"story-body\" data-subscriber-content=\"\">\n<p>What\u2019s done is done.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodgers went to the White House on Thursday and met with President Trump for the second year in a row, following back-to-back World Series championships.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of their visit, the Dodgers had the best record in Major League Baseball with 65 wins and 38 losses. Winning three titles in a row won\u2019t be easy, but assuming they pull off another victory in October, here are five reasons the Dodgers should not go back to the White House next year.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"whats-the-point\" class=\"subhead\">What\u2019s the point?<\/h2>\n<p>Ceremonial visits have been going on for years, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have embraced the tradition with athletes from various sports.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019d like to know why I didn\u2019t have anything to say in 2021, when the Dodgers visited President Biden at the White House, that\u2019s a good question.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t dwell on it at the time because I think such visits are kind of ho-hum. But now we\u2019ve had three visits in five years, and in my head, this hammers home the point that baseball players have nothing to gain from a visit. They\u2019re baseball players, and as such, there is no higher honor than winning the World Series.<\/p>\n<p>I like baseball, but it\u2019s not like these guys are astronauts, just back from the moon.<\/p>\n<p>If the Dodgers want to mark their achievement and honor the game of baseball in the nation\u2019s capital, fine. They should go to the <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.si.edu\/newsdesk\/releases\/national-museum-african-american-history-and-culture-displays-jackie-robinsons\" target=\"_blank\">Smithsonian as a team and visit the display<\/a> where Jackie Robinson\u2019s jersey is enshrined.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"theyre-being-put-in-an-awkward-position\" class=\"subhead\">They\u2019re being put in an awkward position<\/h2>\n<p>As Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts put it in saying that he wouldn\u2019t join his teammates, he couldn\u2019t win either way<u>.<\/u><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I do\u201d go, he said, \u201cpeople are gonna hate me. If I don\u2019t, people are gonna hate me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s an exaggeration, but I get his point. Dodger utility man Kik\u00e9 Hernandez said he wasn\u2019t going, either, explaining that he was busy rehabbing an injury.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodgers should take the pressure off the players by politely declining an invitation to visit.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, people like baseball because it\u2019s an escape, a distraction, a diversion. You want to have a clear head as you try to remember why you willingly packed up your kids and paid $400 for lousy seats and food at Dodger Stadium to watch Kyle Tucker, at $60 million a year, foul out to the catcher.<\/p>\n<p>You do not want to think about the American political cesspool as you watch the Dodgers rally from behind, win in late innings, and inch ever closer to going back to the White House again next year.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"theyre-being-used\" class=\"subhead\">They\u2019re being used<\/h2>\n<p>The players were apparently told they could make their own decision about whether to go to the White House.<\/p>\n<p>What they should have been told was that they were being exploited.<\/p>\n<p>When a president hosts a team at the White House, there is only one reason.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a photo op.<\/p>\n<p>Not for the team, but for the president.<\/p>\n<p>Baseball might no longer be the national pastime, but it\u2019s a part of American culture, with fans of every political stripe in every state. There\u2019s kind of a folksy quality in the manufactured banter between a president and the ballplayers. He can fawn over them and joke with them and look more like a regular guy \u2014 one of the boys.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is really a special team,\u201d Trump said during the Dodger visit. \u201cIt\u2019s special winners. They\u2019re champions, and just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, we knew that when they beat the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n<p>Nine months ago.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"too-much-ring-kissing-is-a-turnoff\" class=\"subhead\">Too much ring kissing is a turnoff<\/h2>\n<p>If you are going to go, can you at least not embarrass yourself?<\/p>\n<p>Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter handed Trump a Dodgers jersey and World Series ring at the White House. Somehow, he managed to restrain himself from bending to one knee and kissing the president\u2019s ring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you for welcoming us today, Mr. President,\u201d Walter said. \u201cWe\u2019re proud of that team and what it has achieved, and we hope to be back here again next year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/dodgers\/story\/2026-07-23\/dodgers-visit-trump-at-white-house-to-celebrate-world-series-win\">The Times\u2019 Maddie Lee noted<\/a>, this was just days after Bloomberg reported that \u201ctwo insurance companies controlled by Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for potential financial improprieties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo charges have been filed,\u201d Lee wrote. \u201cRepresentatives from the parent company of the insurance firms as well as from TWC Global \u2014 the Walter business empire that controls his sporting investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers \u2014 have told reporters they are cooperating with the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s another problem with the Dodgers\u2019 visit. <\/p>\n<p>How can we not wonder about ulterior motives?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to keep track of who\u2019s kissing whose ring.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"politics-is-unavoidable\" class=\"subhead\">Politics is unavoidable<\/h2>\n<p>The Dodger brain trust has attempted to cast White House visits as an exercise in tradition, not politics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike I\u2019ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,\u201d Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the visit. \u201cBecause that\u2019s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I\u2019m not a politician, and I\u2019m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that\u2019s where I stand, really. I\u2019m a baseball coach. That\u2019s what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That couldn\u2019t be more naive.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodgers love to project a wholesome, family-friendly essence. But American discourse has not been more vulgar, polarizing or politicized in my lifetime, and I\u2019m reminded of the line, \u201cLie down with dogs, get up with fleas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Trump\u2019s world, there are only two kinds of people: friends and foes. The Dodgers are now friends, and when Venezuelan World Series hero Miguel Rojas was singled out by Trump, who launched an unprovoked attack on his country, that reeked of calculated political staging.<\/p>\n<p>The White House itself has been a staging ground for political assaults on the Dodgers\u2019 home state and on immigrants who come from regions of the world that are home to some of the Dodger players. Election integrity has been politicized. The Supreme Court has been politicized. The water quality in the reflecting pool has been politicized. And at a White House cage fight, a former first lady was brazenly disparaged.<\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t peel off your baseball uniform, put on your wedding suit, and stand there with the president, smiling and shaking hands and being voluntarily patronized, without having made a political statement.<\/p>\n<p>Better to stick to what you know best.<\/p>\n<p>And besides.<\/p>\n<p>Trump is a Yankees fan.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-07-24\/mailto:steve.lopez@latimes.com\" target=\"_blank\"><i>steve.lopez@latimes.com <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What\u2019s done is done. The Dodgers went to the White House on Thursday and met with President Trump for the second year in a row, following back-to-back World Series championships. At the time of their visit, the Dodgers had the best record in Major League Baseball with 65 wins and 38 losses. Winning three titles&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/f23de49\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3000x1575+0+219\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fef%2F03%2F49244f6742ee8f524314e04d0d19%2F2287378007.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-hub"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}