The Dodgers in Los Angeles are scheduled to visit the White House on Monday, continuing their decades-old tradition for the politically tense governing World Series champions while President Trump occupying his oval office.
In Trump’s first term, the customary visits were boycotted by black and Latino players. And before the Dodgers won the World Series in 2020, their manager, Dave Roberts, had proposed him Skip visit Go to the Trump White House. However, Joseph R. Biden Jr. defeated Trump and fell. The following year’s team.
The franchise won the championship again in 2024, but this year it doesn’t look like the Dodgers are planning to skip their visit. Mookie Betts, the star’s shortstop who refused to go to the White House in 2019 after winning the title with the Boston Red Sox, said he’ll be there this time.
The Dodgers’ visit comes after the Trump administration was criticised for breaking the colour barriers of baseball and deleting an article on the Pentagon website celebrating one of the franchise’s most famous players, Jackie Robinson.
The Department of Defense has worked to wipe out any mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion on its site, but restored the page after a backlash. Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, said that he was “surprising” by the removal and reducing Robinson’s career to “Day’s Tale” was “savage.”
Robinson endured intense verbal abuse when he integrated major league baseball during the 1947 season. (At the time, the Dodgers performed in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. They moved to Los Angeles in 1958.)
Few players are held back by sports with greater respect. Robinson’s number, 42, retired throughout the league in 1997. The sport celebrates Jackie Robinson Day on April 15th, when all players wear the No. 42 uniform each year.
Betts regretted boycotting a White House visit with the Red Sox last week, but said, Athletic said he was “black in America in this situation.”
Roberts, one of MLB’s two black managers, said the Dodgers have decided to collectively go to the White House. The trip is “not political,” Roberts said, and is simply intended to celebrate the team’s World Series title.
“There are a lot of people who are part of this organization,” Roberts said. He told reporters last week. “Different backgrounds. Different cultures, races, genders, and everyone talks differently.”
“We’re all moving forward as an organization,” he said. “We’ve got everything.”
