I’ll start with the kicker. Because why not? There is no turn of phrase that will meaningfully soften or sharpen the situation. There’s no moral, catharsis, or conclusion coming. So here’s where we’re headed: Maybe we don’t need symbolic victories in the face of how bad things are. Maybe the value of sports to reflect the larger societal issues on a stage that’s built for attracting viewership is rendered a little moot by the oppressiveness of the actual news. If you need the issues of the day made palatable through professional entertainers, you’re not really reckoning with the stakes.

Hey, it’s Hannah. The reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers went to the White House and I’m only now writing about it over a week later.

Six years ago, I went to the White House when the then-reigning Red Sox visited during Donald Trump’s first term1. I took the train down to D.C. and back in a day to write about the conspicuous absence of nearly every non-white player — Mookie Betts, David Price, Jackie Bradley Jr., Rafael Devers, Hector Velázquez, Xander Bogaerts, Sandy León, Christian Vázquez, and manager Alex Cora — on the team.

By accepting the invitation to be honored at the White House, the Red Sox put their employees of color in the position of having to choose between the discomfort of being party to a president who would denigrate their rights or the discomfort of taking a stand that will make them enemies of many in their fan base.

It would be laughably self aggrandizing to say the story was important, but it felt like a meaningful act all around — a declaration or at least an acknowledgement that there is nothing neutral about a Trump presidency. Perhaps that’s a bit of a bummer for people who wish to engage with the office on a purely ceremonial level, but unfortunately that’s one of the many casualties of electing a fascist.

The controversy over the Red Sox split attendance was sort of comforting in retrospect. The hallmarks of sport society were contending with the political atrocities of the Trump administration and found them unignorable. It was like when Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to a new law to limit voting accessibility in service of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. That was a reflection not of how liberal MLB is, but of how unhinged the Republican agenda had become.

Taking an extreme stance is a way of moving the middle point toward one side, it’s a tactic the right has used to terrifying success in recent years — drawing political battle lines around human rights or voting rights issues and then crying partisanship when reasonable people or corporations call it out.

It’s become impossible for sports leagues to be decent and appease the radical right wing.

I wrote that, about the Atlanta decision, during the Joe Biden presidency. Decency, it seemed, was winning out over radical right wing appeasement. Ideologically a low bar, but one that seemed worth establishing.

If the second Trump administration has taught us anything, it’s that whatever dissent there was by powerful institutions and people with a lot to lose during his first term was rooted not in decency but in a belief that his ascendence was temporary and an aberration. They abstained from full capitulation on the assumption that the country would course correct.

This post is public so feel free to share it.

Now, the policies are more extreme, the cruelty even less subtle. I just spent entirely too long trying to summarize the needless destruction and suffering wrought entirely on purpose in a way that seemed pithy but also poignant and the whole thing just made me feel gross. The point is: it’s an authoritarian regime that openly seeks to subjugate people of color2.

“Being Black in America in a situation like this, it’s a tough spot to be in. No matter what I choose, somebody’s going to be pissed. Somebody’s going to have an opinion,” Mookie Betts said before the Dodgers’ White House visit.

Ultimately, he went, though. They all did. Dave Roberts, one of two Black managers, went despite comments in 2019 that he would decline an invite to a Trump White House. Betts said he regretted not going with the Red Sox. He called that decision “very selfish,” which is at least a little comforting about his personal beliefs.

I don’t want to litigate Betts’ comments or even his decision. Because he’s right that “[n]obody else in this clubhouse has to go through a decision like this, except me.” And because he’s right that the Red Sox 2019 visit garnered more attention because a group of players declined to attend. I’m proof of that. If Betts had refused to go to the White House again while his white Dodger teammates smiled alongside a president who has made resegregation an administrative priority I probably would have written about it more urgently.

To be honest, it’s hardly even worth being disappointed in the Dodgers more broadly — although the fact that their visit fell in between the temporary government-ordered erasure of Jackie Robinson and the team celebrating its most important franchise icon yesterday gives the latter an air of hypocrisy. I am disappointed, but disappointment is a polite emotion for minor infractions. I’m busy with ire for the actual bad actors in the room. We talk about the importance of professional athlete platforms, but I can figure out how to feel about this particular political moment without their validation.

No, the point isn’t to scold anyone for failing to meet a full-fledged constitutional crisis with sufficient performative disapproval. (I understand that some portion of the team, perhaps even the majority, went because they actively like Trump, voted for him, and would throw their celebrity behind publicly endorsing him.) The administration is flouting the Supreme Court so I think we’re a little past symbolic resistance. Sports aren’t going to save us.

And yet, there’s something chilling about the meaninglessness of their visit in the grand scheme of things. There’s less controversy this time because Trump is more powerful than before. Or at least more emboldened. His audacious virulence cannot be separated from what this country is right now. To feel aggrieved by a mere acronym about inclusivity is as American as baseball. He’s normalized that the president of the United States can shake hands with athletes one day and muse about deporting citizens to an infamous foreign prison another because he is the president and he does precisely that with glee.

And once it’s normal, why not go along with it? To resist would be such a hassle, a distraction even, from the cool good shit like winning a World Series. Evil seems incongruous with the pomp silliness of the ceremony; the president cracking dumb jokes in an ostentatious room with curtains that make the color gold seem complicit. Would the administration really make everything so loud and shiny if they were doing something worth being ashamed of?

This is the problem with people who feel no shame.

Either that or they were literally, on an individual level, afraid for their safety. Kneeling before a tyrant becomes normalized, too, if everyone does it out of self-protection.

What we’re talking about

• You know how teams make t-shirts emblazoned with inside jokes or motivational slogans? I saw a particularly good one last week. The Phillies have a shirt (alas, I didn’t snap a picture but here’s the back of it) that says W.A.R on the front and “win a ring” on the back. Cheeky! I’m into it!

• Read about Jackie Robinson from Lex Pryor at The Ringer: “He was reshaped, sharp edges smoothed down, into something that could be embraced without leaving a mark.” —HK

• Was Andrew McCutchen as surprised to learn that you can still order Phiten necklaces as I was upon reading that Andrew McCutchen ordered Phiten necklaces for the entire Pirates team? Also, they worked. The Pirates had their best offensive showing of the season. So, trend back? —HK

• Mariners prospect Jurrangelo Cijntje, who you may know as the switch pitcher, is embarking on his first professional season, and we have an early indication as to how his development is going to work. From MLB.com: “Seattle’s current plan for the Dutch-born Curaçao native: to keep both sides fresh by pitching exclusively left-handed in one short bullpen stint during the week, while maintaining his regular spot in the rotation.” Bullpen with the left, start with the right. And they say there’s no room for lefty specialists nowadays. —ZC

• Here’s something new you can do with baseballs: Write an album, and possibly solve your screentime problem. Matt Berninger, the baritone livewire frontman of The National, mentioned back in the fall that he had taken to carrying baseballs around on tour and using them as notebooks, essentially. It looks like they featured prominently in creating his upcoming solo album. (The first single, Bonnet of Pins, is fantastic.) —ZC

• The Minnesota Twins are not having a fun time. As an avatar of a continuous implosion that began last August, consider Jose Miranda. The infielder was demoted to Triple-A after committing a baserunning blunder of carelessness, but before he got into a minor-league game, he hit the injured list with a hand problem. How did he sustain that? “He sustained the injury during the Saints’ off day Monday shopping at Target. A case of water slipped from his grasp, and he felt pain when he re-grabbed it before it fell.” —ZC

• Bryce Harper used a baseball bat to pull off an in-game gender reveal for the child he and his wife are expecting. Trea Turner was tasked with actually handing him the revelatory bat (blue, it’s a boy). “I was confused at first, but I think he wanted to share that moment with us,” Turner said. Honestly, same. But I’ll ask Hannah: Fan or Not a Fan? —ZC

• Without even wading into more general feelings about gender reveals I can say: Not a Fan. The reveal part of a gender reveal happens in an instant — and in this particular case that instant was a brief in-game interaction between Bryce Harper and his teammate Trea Turner? And presumably Harper’s wife, Kayla, learned they were having a boy while watching the at-bat by herself somewhere? If you’re going to put a lot of stock in the emotional weight of the learning your unborn child’s sex, wouldn’t you want to share that moment with your partner? —HK

• And, for something a little lighter to end on, this: