To satisfy with Trump now’s to defile the reminiscence of Dodgers nice Jackie Robinson and to humiliate a lot of group’s personal gamers.
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Los Angeles Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts, proper, greets Rachel Robinson, spouse of Jackie Robinson, earlier than a baseball recreation between the Cincinnati Reds and the Los Angeles Dodgers in Los Angeles on April 15, 2022.
(Ashley Landis / AP Picture)
In April 2022, I used to be at a packed Dodgers Stadium, rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of Chavez Ravine. This wasn’t only a recreation. It was a celebration of the seventy fifth anniversary of Jackie Robinson smashing Main League Baseball’s colour line in 1947. On this evening, the group’s possession group handed out tens of 1000’s of baseball jerseys with Robinson’s quantity 42 on the again. Then, in a showstopping second, Jackie’s unimaginable then-100-year-old widow, Rachel Robinson, was pushed across the subject waving to the followers. I’ve by no means heard a stadium so loud earlier than the opening pitch. It was stunning. But now once I give it some thought, I wince. I wince as a result of the 2024 World Collection champion Los Angeles Dodgers have introduced that they are going to be visiting the Trump White Home on April 7.
Two weeks in the past, an outcry arose when Trump’s secretary of protection, former Fox & Mates cohost Pete Hegseth, oversaw the removing of a webpage praising Jackie Robinson’s army service throughout World Battle II. The web page redirected to 1 with a URL containing the initials DEI. In Trump world, being branded “DEI” means you might be undeserving of acknowledgement, as a result of, for “woke” causes, you leapfrogged a greater white man. “Woke” has develop into a stand-in for each slur Trump’s followers are itching to say.
The bumbling Hegseth even had his press division blame DEI on “cultural Marxism,” a phrase that silly individuals use to attempt to sound each antisemitic and sensible. I hope 89-year-old Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax isn’t conscious that his group is wading into this sewer of antisemites by visiting the White Home. He’d put A BROCH on the group he loves.
Present Problem
After an uproar that Hegseth’s band of idiots by no means noticed coming, the Protection Division reversed course, blaming an AI program for trashing Robinson’s web page. No apology was issued. Solely a smirk. This sort of unrepentant response is why Dodgers major proprietor and multi-billionaire Mark Walters wants to know that going to the White Home feeds the Dodgers into Trump’s propaganda machine. Trump is sending a message to followers and anti-racist detractors alike: “I may be racist as I would like, even towards Jackie Robinson! And the Dodgers will nonetheless come crawling.” Breaking individuals is how this administration initiatives power. Walters will smile alongside the president, wanting each complicit and damaged whereas Trump puffs out his chest, making clear that he operates not solely above the legislation however any commonplace of decency. When tales are informed sooner or later concerning the indignities Robinson needed to undergo, individuals will study concerning the position performed by Mark Walters.
The Dodgers also needs to refuse this invite as a result of Trump has put the lives of a number of Dodgers and their households in danger. There are 63 Main League Baseball gamers who had been born in Venezuela. On the Dodgers, Edgardo Henriquez, Brusdar Graterol, and Miguel Rojas are all from Venezuela. Provided that the US is now sending Venezuelans with out due course of to an El Salvadoran labor camp, telling these gamers to set foot on this White Home appears merciless. It’s telling them to close up and play, or danger one thing worse than a group wonderful.
The Dodgers have a fantastically various custom marked by legends like Robinson, Roy Campanella, Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela, Hideo Nomo, and now the nice Shohei Ihtani. Range has been their power. There may be, nevertheless, a parallel Dodgers custom that this go to to the White Home snugly suits into. That custom is marked by former proprietor Walter O’Malley’s selecting earnings over individuals: first by shifting the group out of Brooklyn to Los Angeles after which efficiently lobbying town to uproot the Mexican immigrant neighborhood of Chavez Ravine to construct Dodgers Stadium. Then there was group president Al Campanis, who in 1987 stated on nationwide tv that “Blacks don’t have the requirements” to handle groups or be executives. Campanis bleated this on a present meant to have a good time Jackie Robinson. Going to this White Home, in 2025, will be a part of that shameful record.
As an alternative of claiming no, the Dodgers have made the coward’s decisions. The group is performing furtively, with nobody on the group saying if there was even a dialogue as as to if to say no the White Home invite. No participant will reply to questions concerning the insult to Robinson’s legacy or if they’re involved concerning the risks of the ICE kidnappings. Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts stated in 2019 that he’d by no means go to a Trump White Home. Now Roberts says, “It’s actually an enormous honor to get the invitation to the White Home. To my understanding, each World Collection champion will get that honor, so it’s an awesome honor for all of us.” He stated “honor” thrice. One solely does that below duress. Somebody examine Roberts’s eye blinks for Morse code.
This nation is being run into the bottom by an addled, narcissistic autocrat who takes a particular pleasure in seeing former opponents break. He’s smirking at you, Mark Walters, as a result of he doesn’t should apologize for something. The truth is, your presence is an apology to him. If the group visits the White Home, you’ll develop into a part of tales that we’ll inform about Trump’s desecration of Robinson’s reminiscence. You’ll have accomplished nothing on behalf of the group’s Venezuelan gamers. You aren’t dwelling as much as one of the best of your franchise’s historical past. You might be dwelling right down to the worst. You aren’t Jackie Robinson. You’re Al Campanis. And it is best to both cancel or have everybody on the group put on #42 jerseys when assembly Trump. Make a press release—as a result of Jackie Robinson, whom you declare to honor, by no means suffered in silence when there was one thing that wanted to be stated.
If you wish to inform the group how you’re feeling about this, simply e-mail (electronic mail protected).
Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin is the sports activities editor at The Nation. He’s the creator of 11 books on the politics of sports activities. He’s additionally the coproducer and author of the brand new documentary Behind the Protect: The Energy and Politics of the NFL.
