WASHINGTON — Winning the World Series and earning the celebratory trip to the White House to see the president still isn’t getting old for the Los Angeles Dodgers, even as they’ve won two championships in the past five years.
Manager Dave Roberts, for instance, particularly enjoyed his first peek at the Oval Office, which Dodgers players and staff rolled through, single file, after getting feted by President Donald Trump.
"I actually got a chance to take a photo in front of the Declaration of Independence," Roberts said Monday of the national treasure hanging in the Oval Office.
"For myself, who’s a History major, that’s a picture I’m going to cherish for a long time."
History, such as it is these days, was wedged into virtually every minute before and after the Dodgers were toasted in the East Room.
With Trump holding steady on controversial tariffs that have roiled global markets, the Dow Jones Industrial Index was down 709 points, or nearly 2%, as the Dodgers’ ceremony concluded around noon. About an hour after regaling the Dodgers, Trump took a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to talk both tariffs and, as Trump put it, the significant "help" afforded the ally in its war in Gaza.
And as the Dodgers got ready to stretch and warm up for their Monday night game at Nationals Park, the Supreme Court sided with Trump lawyers and placed on hold a judge’s order that the Trump administration must bring back to the United States a Maryland father it had mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
Unprecedented times, indeed.
Trump and his administration’s part in policies that a significant portion of the Dodgers fan base finds odious – and even resulted in the scrubbing of Dodgers trailblazer Jackie Robinson’s accomplishments from a government web site – made this trip a loaded proposition.
Yet unlike 2019, when current Dodgers superstar Mookie Betts and roughly half the 2018 champion Boston Red Sox skipped a trip to Trump’s White House, the Dodgers – save injured star Freddie Freeman – were all present and accounted for.
Even those who had chafed against Trump in the past.
"They don’t agree with the decision to go," says Dodgers playoff hero Kiké Hernández of disillusioned fans, "but they have the right to have an opinion."
Hernández had criticized Trump after his treatment of Puerto Rico in his first term. He was among the handful of Dodgers Trump made a point to depart the dais and shake hands during the 25-minute ceremony.
So, too, was Betts, whom Trump lauded for his ability; the president seemed to hold that handshake a ...
