Tag Archives: Washington Nationals

Sports news

Get ready for the ridicule, Sean Doolittle

Sean Doolittle isn’t the first athlete to decline a White House invitation. Donald Trump isn’t even the first president to receive a refusal from a championship-winning athlete.

Neither of them will be the last individuals take part in such a strange tango.

However, Sean Doolittle — a relief pitcher for the Washington Nationals World Series champion baseball team — is likely in for a rough ride from the president of the United States.

Why? Because Doolittle said he cannot attend a White House ceremony presided over by Trump, a man he detests. Doolittle said he doesn’t like the way the president talks about immigrants, the poor and those who come from so-called “sh**hole countries.”

Doolittle said he and his wife adhere to the principle of kindness and have worked to help those in stricken “sh**hole” nations.

Trump, of course, has invited a lot of this kind of reaction from athletes and the teams on which they play. The Golden State Warriors stayed away from the White House after winning the NBA title a couple of years ago. Trump made quite a bit of hay over it via social media.

Will he do the same to Doolittle? What if other Nationals players decide to stay away? Will they get the social media bullying that has made the president infamous?

The Trump era as president is going to take another bizarre turn as he seeks in his usually clumsy fashion to honor some pro athletes, many of whom quite likely would rather be somewhere else than in his presence.

Sports news

Who didn’t see this coming?

I guess this had to be one of the biggest non-surprises of the 2019 World Series.

Donald Trump showed up tonight at the Washington Nationals ballpark in D.C., while the Nats were playing the Houston Astros in the fifth game of the World Series. The public address announcer told the crowd of more than 40,000 fans in the third inning that the president was among them.

The crowd reaction? They booed loudly and then began chanting “Lock him up!” in a move reminiscent of the “Lock her up!” chant heard during the 2016 presidential campaign; the former chant, of course, was aimed at Hillary Rodham Clinton and her now largely debunked e-mail controversy.

But now the president is facing, shall we say, much more serious charges of corruption and violation of his oath of office. He is likely to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

So he goes the ballpark for a little “down time” from the rigors of the impeachment inquiry and killing of the Islamic State guru in Syria.

He got the greeting he deserved and quite likely expected to receive from the Nationals crowd.

Is he disheartened by it? Hardly. That would require a conscience on the part of the president.

Sports news

Trump might get to add some drama to World Series … do ya think?

Well now. There will be a Game 5 in the 2019 World Series, thanks to the Houston Astros winning the third game Friday night in Washington, D.C., against the Nationals

Do you know what that means? It means that Donald J. Trump will get to attend Game 5 as he had already announced he would do.

He won’t take the mound to toss out the first pitch, a la President George W. Bush, who in 2001 famously fired a strike at Yankee Stadium. Nor will he toss the pitch from the stands, as many presidents have done dating back nearly to the founding of the Grand Old Game.

It is reported he will arrive after the game starts and will leave before the final out; the president’s intent is to avoid too much disruption for the security.

I am left to wonder, which I’ll do right here: Will the public address announcer reveal the president’s attendance at the game? If that occurs, what then do you suppose will be the fans’ reaction to hearing that Donald Trump is among them?

It is well-known how divided this country has been for years preceding the presidency of Donald Trump, whose rhetoric only has widened that divide.

We might have gotten a hint of that divide when Washington Nationals owner Mark Lerner has said that the president “has every right” to attend a World Series game.

Doesn’t that go, um, without saying?