The Los Angeles Dodgers are scheduled to celebrate the 2024 World Series Championship at the White House on Monday, with most, if not all, of the teams appearing to be in attendance.
The team will travel before they face the Washington Nationals on Monday. This is a move that team president Stan Kasten said was a player’s decision.
“This was something we discussed with all the players and everyone wanted to go,” Kasten said via Times columnist Dylan Hernandez. “Remember, everyone here grew up wanting to be a world champion, and it comes with champagne toast, the stupidity of the locker room, parades, rings and invitations to the White House.
“Everyone wanted to go, so we did,” he added.
“Everyone” includes Dodgers star Mookie Betts, who sat on a trip to the White House in 2019 after winning the 2018 World Series with the Boston Red Sox during Trump’s first term.
Mookie Betts is keeping an eye on the 2024 World Series Celebration Show held at Dodger Stadium on November 1, 2024 (Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
“I made my own thing [in 2019]”Betts said on Friday for each Bill Plunkett in the Orange County Register: “I’m not the same person at the time.”
Manager Dave Roberts said the Dodgers never won the World Series during Trump’s first term, but confirmed he was in attendance.
The visit comes as the White House faces a rapid deterioration in the stock market after last week’s “liberation day.”
The visit also comes after the franchise’s most famous player, Jackie Robinson, was scrutinized by the Trump administration. The push to remove all mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion led to Robinson’s military history on a webpage that was wiped out from the Department of Defense site.
The page was then restored, but the Dodgers’ White House visit comes just eight days before Major League Baseball celebrates a key figure in American history with “Jackie Robinson Day” since 2004.
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