If I’m to believe the myriad of folks on my social media feeds, I’d be concerned that anyone still sporting Los Angeles Dodgers gear might now be as much of a target for ridicule–or worse–as anyone driving a Tesla.
The Dodgers just happened to have their annual road trip to Washington this week and, like any other defending sports champion, were invited to the White House to be honored. The honor of visiting the building that houses American leadership goes back exactly a century, when President Calvin Coolidge invited the homestanding Washington Senators after they won their first-ever title with a thrilling extra-inning conquering of the four-time defending National League champion New York Giants, led by an incredible performance in relief by its veteran ace Walter Johnson, who had languished with what was up until that eventful 1924 season an American League also-ran. It was impossible for even the leader of the free world not to get caught up in fandom.
And say this much for the current person in the White House–he’s a sports fan. He’s a golfer–perhaps not as successful as he claims to be– he once owned a professional football team, and he actually willingly attends many football, wrestling and mixed martial events in person. So the fact that he hasn’t completely forgotten baseball is a plus.
So no matter what one may think of him as a politician or human being I do think he actually enjoyed the experience of rubbing shoulders with winners, which even mainstream media picked up on in their reporting of yesterday’s visit. CBS Los Angeles’ Chelsea Hylton:
President Donald Trump welcomed Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House on Monday to congratulate them for winning the World Series last season.
Trump complimented “the very talented people” who beat the New York Yankees in five games, while also refusing to introduce some Democratic senators at the ceremony because “I just don’t particularly like them, so I won’t introduce (them).” The event came during a manic Monday for U.S. stocks after Trump doubled down on his tariffs.
CNN’s Jill Martin:
Trump called Dodgers manager Dave Roberts “one of the greatest managers ever to wear the Dodger blue,” and he also notably shook hands with Mookie Betts, who back in 2019 had opted not to visit the White House when he was a member of the 2018 World Series champion Boston Red Sox. “That guy can play, can’t he?” Trump said of Betts. “I mean, unbelievable.”
In a 2019 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Roberts previously indicated he would decline an invite. But last month, Roberts said, according to ESPN, that “it’s a great honor for all of us” to visit the White House. Betts, meanwhile, according to the Los Angeles Times, recently called it a “regret” that he didn’t visit in 2019, which was during Trump’s first term.
Betts also said, according to the Times, that in hindsight he felt his absence in 2019 distracted from the team’s accomplishment and that it had made the news more about him, which he called “selfish.” “This is not about me; I don’t want anything to be about me,” Betts said, per the Times last week. “This is about the Dodgers. Because these boys were there for me.”
The trip came almost a month after a Department of Defense webpage describing Brooklyn Dodgers great and civil rights icon Jackie Robinson’s military service was restored after it had come down.
That development came after pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were taken down — which the Pentagon said was a mistake — amid the department’s effort to remove content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which the Trump administration considers “DEI.” Neither Robinson nor any other previous Dodgers greats were mentioned at the ceremony.
I happen to know many people who have had the experience of being inside the White House, and it’s still on my personal bucket list as well. There’s incredible history and awe-inspiring architecture and artifacts. It’s a damn impressive building and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It just happens to currently be occupied by one of the most literally odious human beings ever created. And the Dodgers’ visit just happened to occur amidst a particularly incendiary time when an awful lot of folks are literally shrieking their consternation at his very existence.
So I get why the level of vitriol is so escalated. Timing is everything to many.
But may I remind those who are swearing off their fandom with such determination–I heard a lot of you say the same thing before.
When FOX owned the team during some particularly marginal on-field times, when the first thing their management did with Rupert Murdoch’s blessing was trade the most popular young talent on the team, Mike Piazza, for three overpriced components of the Florida Marlins’ shocking World Championship team and control of the cable network that carried their games, you whined pretty loudly then, albeit without the amplification of Facebook.
When carpetbagger Frank McCourt took over and Ponzied his way into dismantling what little success the late oughts team had and wound up in a very public battle with his highly litigious wife you moaned and swore you’d never give another dime to a team that dramatically raised the price of parking at Dodger Stadium–because that’s the only business that he’s ever truly succeeded at.
And some of you are old and New York-rooted enough to recall when Walter O’Malley leveraged the dreams of Robert Moses and the siren’s song of Rosalind Wyman to uproot the team that had more than seven decades invested and a name that honored those that avoided being run over by trolleys to relocate a continent away you declared you’d never, ever root for those opportunistic heathens ever again.
It’s funny how many of you are still invested enough in what transpired in Washington yesterday to yet again rise up and declare that THIS is the straw that broke your two-humped back.
If Betts, Ohtani and Roberts–three individuals that have an awful lot more personally invested in these issues than most of you do–are capable of honoring the building and not its tenant, if they chose to play along for the egotistical photo op for that likely once-in-a-lifetime honor, who are you to say they are a collection of turncoats no longer worthy of your precious time and occasional merch purchases?
Do you seriously believe Mark Walter, Magic Johnson and Stan Kasten will for a nanosecond miss your scintilla of revenue? Do you think for a second they even care about you at all? Reality check: They didn’t long before Fat Orange Jesus dragged his smelly ass back into the White House, and they still won’t even long after his sons drag his decaying corpse out of it.
You still rooted for the team even then. And I’m pretty damn sure you still will, perhaps as soon as today. Many of you fans were equally, if not more upset, with what transpired in Washington last night–a 6-4 loss to the woeful Nationals where defense and the bullpen failed them–than you were with what happened earlier in the day.
Remember, the blood you bleed is Dodger blue, not Democratic blue.
Until next time…
1 thought on “Forever Dodger Boo? Yeah, Right.”
I never once complained at the various cast of incompetent owners and GM’s – that’s just baseball, the players and team can’t control that. Going to take cheery photos with the new nazi party is far beyond the pale and incomparable to the examples you gave. It’s especially egregious given their massive latino fanbase, while ICE (the gestapo) are targeting legal hispanic residents for deportation with no due process. This is straight up nazi shit and anything other than firm disavowal is complicity and enabling. I’m renouncing my fandom too – this is about principles and values that transcend sports and the whole dodgers organization just showed us who they are.