The Dodgers are visiting Trump at the White House today—and ‘Jackie Robinson would be outraged’

President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across a wide swath of American society. So when Trump sent a White House invitation to the 2024 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers—the franchise of Jackie Robinson, a team whose identity is indelibly linked to its role in dismantling racial segregation in sports—it surprised some that the Dodgers accepted. Less than a week before they did so the Defense Department removed a tribute to Robinson on its website, a move apparently linked to its DEI purge. (The page was restored following a public outcry.)

Author and retired urban policy professor Peter Dreier is among those who have criticized the Dodgers’ decision to celebrate their World Series victory with Trump. Dreier, who has chronicled the history of baseball and social activism in two books, co-wrote an opinion piece in the L.A. Times making the case for why the Dodgers should decline an invite from Trump—even before one was issued. Capital & Main spoke with Dreier the weekend before the Dodgers were scheduled to visit the Oval Office.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Capital & Main: Dodger manager Dave Roberts says that visiting the White House isn’t about the current president but about the office itself. Why do you disagree with that?

Peter Dreier: Every president likes to get his picture taken with famous athletes. This is a photo opportunity for Trump to be seen with popular athletes and to bask in the reflected glory of the Dodgers’ victory. So it’s clearly not just about the office, it’s about the occupant. He’s sliding in the polls right now, and I assume he thinks that being seen with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani will give him some free publicity that can help his presidency. So I think it’s naive and somewhat disingenuous for Dave Roberts to say that, and I doubt he believes it.

Given the Dodgers’ history of breaking the color barrier by making Jackie Robinson the first Black Major League Baseball player, should that history and Trump’s targeting of DEI have been a factor in the Dodgers’ decision about going to the White House?

The Dodgers pat themselves on the back all the time for being the first team to integrate, and they’ve ridden the Jackie Robinson reputation for a long time since 1947. So that’s clearly something that they are proud of. 

Trump has called for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. Los Angeles is a city with a very large number of immigrants and whose economy relies in large part on immigrant labor, including that of undocumented immigrants. Should that have played a role in the team’s decision?

There are quite a few players on the Dodgers who are from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. If they have any social conscience or awareness, which I’m sure most of them do, they aren’t happy with the way Trump’s administration is treating immigrants. 

Will you stop going to Dodger games?

If I stopped going to sports events because I didn’t like the politics of the players or organization, I wouldn’t go to sports events. Just like if I only bought clothes made by union labor I’d be naked. It’ll be interesting to see whether Billie Jean King or Magic Johnson [part owners of the Dodgers] go to the White House. They explicitly campaigned for Harris. 

Are you disappointed that neither Johnson nor King nor any of the more prominent Dodger players have spoken out against the team’s decision to go visit Trump in the White House?

Yes. I’m disappointed that they didn’t have the courage to speak out. Maybe Billie Jean King and Magic will speak out at some point, but so far, they haven’t. 

When it comes to sports and politics, where do you think individual players or teams should draw the line and either take a stand or not? 

If you’re a big star, you can speak out. You might lose some fans, but you might gain some fans. Trump barely got half of the votes in the United States and got very few in the L.A. area, so it would not be that harmful to the careers of Dodger players for them to speak out against the Dodgers going to meet Trump. And it’s very disappointing that none of them have stepped up to the plate, so to speak.

Would Jackie Robinson have gone with the Dodgers to visit Donald Trump and the White House, were he alive today?

Jackie Robinson would be outraged by the Dodgers meeting with Trump. Jackie Robinson was a liberal Republican. He went to the Republican convention [in 1964] supporting the liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller when they nominated Barry Goldwater, and he heard people say things in that convention that so angered him that he came out of that event and said I know what it must have felt like to be at a Nazi rally. Donald Trump is a lot worse.

Robinson always had the courage of his convictions regardless of what impact it had on him. He was criticized during his playing career for speaking out, and he said I’m always going to speak out against injustice and if you don’t like it, it’s too bad.

So I’m 100% sure Jackie Robinson would be upset that the Dodgers are going to the White House, and I think he’d be extremely disappointed in [Black superstar] Mookie Betts in particular. 

Doesn’t every player and executive on a team have equal responsibility for their decision to go or not to go to visit a controversial president in the White House? 

Betts was the one that I thought would be most likely to speak out first and then he’d bring other players along with him. He’s sort of the moral leader of the team. After George Floyd was killed he got the team, white and Black, not [to] play for a game. 

And what they’re all saying is, “I’m doing this for the team,” but there’s a bigger team called America or a bigger team called society. And they’re playing under a fascist president, and I would hope that people that have a public platform like Major League Baseball players would speak out.

— Danny Feingold, Capital & Main

language at top of story: This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.