The Chicago Cubs Will Visit The White House While Obama Is In Office, Not Trump
The World Series champion Chicago Cubs will visit the White House in the traditional post-victory season with the President, but they’ll be doing so in the waning days of Obama’s presidency, rather than after Trump takes office.
As Yahoo News reports, back in November, after the Cubs made history and won the World Series for the first time in over a century, Barack Obama invited the team to celebrate the victory with him at the White House.
It happened: @Cubs win World Series. That’s change even this South Sider can believe in. Want to come to the White House before I leave?
— President Obama (@POTUS) November 3, 2016
Bold words coming from a Chicago South Sider and admitted White Sox fan, right? Not necessarily: it’s not particularly uncommon for championship-winning sports teams to stop by the White House and hobnob with the president after their victory. Last year, the 2015 World Champions Kansas City Royals visited the White House, as did the 2014 World Champions San Francisco Giants before them, and so on. And it’s not just limited to baseball. Super Bowl 50 Champions also visited the White House, as have Super Bowl teams before them. And so on.
In baseball, those White House visits usually occur during the season, perhaps when the winning team is swinging through Washington on a road trip.
The Cubs, on the other hand, announced this week that they’d visit Obama next Monday, as The Chicago Sun-Times reports, with just six days remaining in Obama’s presidency. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed the visit.
“I’m pleased to confirm that many of my colleagues here in the West Wing who are themselves Cubs fans will get to enjoy exactly the same thing when the Chicago Cubs come to the White House on Monday.”
If you’ve been paying attention to this article, you’ve noticed that normally the World Champions visit during the following baseball season. However, by April, Donald Trump will be president, not Barack Obama. And the Cubs are bucking that tradition to visit Obama in the winter at the expense of not visiting Trump in the spring.
Is it coincidence or a political statement by the Cubs? Well, nobody knows, but the Cubs official who made that decision, and he isn’t talking. However, keep in mind that Barack Obama was president when the Cubs won the World Series, and Barack Obama was the president who invited them to the White House, not Donald Trump. Maybe their coach, John Maddon, doesn’t want his team dealing with distractions when they swing through Washington during the season. In other words, it stands to reason that the Cubs are simply trying to do Obama a solid while they still have the chance.
It also bears noting that, as an organization, the Cubs aren’t exactly anti-Trump. I’m talking about the upper management here, of course, and not the individual players (and truthfully, the players’ politics are their own business). As CNN Money noted in early November (before the election), the Ricketts Family, which owns the Cubs franchise, are prominent Republicans. Prominent Republicans who poured money into an anti-Trump PAC that is.
However, as the Sun-Times noted, it now appears that Trump and the Ricketts have since made nice. One prominent Ricketts, Todd, has already been tapped by the Trump administration for the job of Deputy Secretary of Commerce.
Do you think the Chicago Cubs are wrong to visit with Barack Obama at the White House in the off-season rather than with Donald Trump during the season?
[Featured Image by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]
