The Los Angeles Dodgers confirmed they will visit the White House on July 23 to celebrate their 2025 World Series title, and the press immediately turned a baseball photo op into a political purity test — because nothing matters more to institutional media than whether a sports team bends the knee to the right political faction.
This is the same ritual every championship team endures, and every time the press treats it as a referendum on civic virtue. The Dodgers visited Joe Biden's White House in 2021 for their 2020 title, and Donald Trump's White House last year for their 2024 title, according to KABC-TV. This year's visit falls on an off-day during a nine-game East Coast road trip. Trump extended the invitation in a social media post shortly after the team's World Series victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Los Angeles Times ran a column by Bill Plaschke declaring the visit "sickening" and demanding to know why the Dodgers would "embrace the person trying to tear this city apart." Plaschke invoked the "gloriously diverse faces" of the team's fan base and the chants of "Let's go, Doyers" — as if a championship celebration at the White House is an act of betrayal against anyone who cheers for the home team. The Times framed the entire visit as a moral failure rather than a routine tradition.
Yardbarker reported that Dodgers utilityman Enrique Hernandez plans to skip the visit, responding to a fan on Instagram with a simple "I'm not." Hernandez participated in last year's visit but later criticized the experience as "a lot of waiting around" and said he had no interest in speaking with the president. His comment has since been deleted. That is his right — and it is also the right of his teammates to attend.
What the press will not tell you: this controversy exists to distract from the fact that both parties continue to fail working Americans on the issues that actually matter. While columnists hyperventilate over a photo op, inflation eats paychecks, the border stays open, and permanent Washington sends American money overseas without ever accounting for it. The Daily Beast, for instance, spent the same news cycle amplifying a CNN shouting match between MAGA figures over whether the U.S. should commit troops and treasure to Iran — a debate where the only question that matters to ordinary Americans, how many troops and how much money, was the one the establishment voices refused to answer.
Meanwhile, Business Insider reported that the White House announced Trump Accounts — investment accounts for children born between 2025 and 2028 — have drawn $125 million from American families in five days, with donors including SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell, Dell CEO Michael Dell, and others. That is a policy story with real stakes for families. It got a fraction of the coverage that Hernandez's Instagram comment received.
The message from the press corps is clear: symbolic compliance matters more than substance. Who stands where in a photo line is treated as news. Whether your children have investment accounts or whether your tax dollars fund another overseas commitment — that is an afterthought.
The Dodgers will show up on July 23, some players will skip, and the republic will survive either way. The real question is why the media keeps demanding that every American institution serve as a prop in their political theater — and who benefits from keeping working people focused on anything except the failures that actually affect their lives.
