When news broke that the Dodgers planned to visit President Trump at the White House to commemorate last year’s World Series win, grumbles quickly spread across L.A.
Who in the front office or clubhouse thought it was smart to celebrate the Dodgers’ incredible 2024 run — powered by talent homegrown and international that looks like the city on its logo — with someone who lost L.A. County to Kamala Harris by nearly 33 points?
Why would the Blue Crew want to be seen with the reddest member of this country’s own Red Army?
How could the team of Jackie Robinson and Jaime Jarrín — with appreciation nights this season for seven ethnic groups, the LGBTQ+ community and labor unions — possibly want anything to do with a commander-in-chief who has declared all things DEI verboten and wants to gut labor rights?
Calls immediately came for the Dodgers to follow the lead of champions like the Golden State Warriors and Philadelphia Eagles, who boycotted the White House during Trump’s first term as a rebuke of everything he stands for.
One of those voices was my fellow Times columnista Dylan Hernández, who wrote last week that if the Dodgers follow through on the invite, they will be “bending the knee to hateful forces similar to the ones they challenged when breaking their sport’s color barrier.”
But showing up doesn’t necessarily have to mean bowing down.
Boycotts are a time-honored tradition in sports. In 2020, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play to protest the police shooting of a Black man in Wisconsin, leading to similar actions by teams across the NBA, Major League Soccer, baseball and the WNBA. College athletes have walked out of practices to protest racism on campuses. Countries forgo the Olympics for political reasons all the time.
But the most powerful and best-remembered political protests by athletes are when they take their actions to, well, where the action is. Think Tommie Smith and John Carlos standing in silence, shoeless, gloved fists raised in a Black Power salute, during the 200-meter medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the 2016 season while the national anthem played — a move that may have ultimately cost him his career. Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali criticizing the Vietnam War and anti-Black racism in the prime of his career.
Those sportsmen brought dissent where it needed to be heard: in the face of power, during their brightest moments, at risk to their livelihoods. And history has absolved them all.
Tigers quarterback Joe Burrow gives President Trump a team jersey as they take part in an event honoring the 2019 College Football National Champions, the Louisiana State University Tigers, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., in 2020.
(Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
White House visits by championship teams are a silly affair, quickly forgotten. But they’re now a tradition of American sports, so I get why Dodgers president Stan Kasten tried to justify the decision to Hernández by saying, “It’s what [the players] all come to associate with being world champions. Everyone wanted to go, and so we did.”
But for him to insist, as he did to Hernández, that there’s nothing political about it is as laughable as the proposed Dodger Stadium gondola. That’s why the team should not only swing by the White House on Monday, they should do it with the weight of L.A. on their minds.
I don’t expect the Dodgers to lash out at Trump and his policies, which have been one giant middle finger to California and everything it stands for. But just being there can be a powerful rebuke, if they own it.
They should bring along part-owner Billie Jean King, the tennis legend who fought machismo in sports and was one of the first LGBTQ athletes to publicly come out. Let Venezuela-born Miguel Rojas stand by Trump so the internet can point out that the president wants to end deportation protections for 600,000 of his countrymen.
Have Shohei Ohtani, the reigning National League MVP and the greatest baseball player in the world, shake Trump’s hand to allow headlines to bloom about Trump’s 24% tariffs on Japan. What, will the president next crack down on foreign athletes in the name of fostering American talent?
Everyone should wear No. 42 jerseys in honor of Robinson, who famously broke baseball’s color line and also fought segregation in the military. The Department of Defense initially took down an article on its website about Robinson’s military service — and his refusal to move to the back of an Army bus — until facing furious pushback from everyone with a sense of decency.
All of those gestures are simple and doable and speak volumes. Sometimes, merely showing up and not hiding who you are is how to fight back best.
Opponents of Trump can’t scream into the void, or among themselves, and think that’s resistance enough. They shouldn’t cede the traditions of this country, like the flag, the White House and democracy, to a tyrant like Trump just because he has wrapped himself in them.
Going to the White House does not normalize Trump — it’s a reminder that the place is ours, not his.
Besides, L.A. shouldn’t shut out Trump from our lives, especially while he’s in power. He needs to be dealt with in any way possible — and that includes meeting him in person.
That’s why when Trump visited the wreckage of the Palisades fire earlier this year, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger sat with him at a roundtable discussion, reminding the president in front of the press what L.A. is about and challenging him to help.
The Dodgers can’t possibly think that just posing for photos and handing Trump a commemorative jersey qualifies as time well spent. Or maybe it’s all wishful thinking on my part. For all the hype about being there for fans and reflecting L.A. at all times, the Dodgers have historically cared only about one thing: the Dodgers.
So my last argument for the team to do something significant with their visit makes it all about them.
Guys: Y’all pioneered the type of globalism and multiculturalism that Trump loathes, that L.A. now exemplifies and that continues to power the best franchise in baseball. It’s time to stand tall for the Dodger Way at the moment it matters the most.
