Arellano: Go visit Trump's White House, Dodgers, but stand up for L.A. while you're there
The Dodgers are heading to Trump's White House like it's just another photo op, but the real test is whether Los Angeles' team will actually stand for the city that made them.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are set to visit Donald Trump's White House on Thursday, an appearance that lands with all the conviction of a team that stayed in the dugout during a bench-clearing brawl only to shake hands afterward.
That's not rhetoric from a partisan critic. It's the blunt assessment of the situation facing a franchise that represents a city still raw from the political and cultural fault lines Trump has widened. The visit puts the Dodgers in the awkward spot of seeking ceremonial recognition from an administration many in Los Angeles view as hostile to the values the city claims as its own.
Yet showing up is not the same as surrendering. The column urges the team to use the platform to speak for Los Angeles rather than simply pose for pictures. In a town where baseball has always carried cultural weight beyond the scoreboard, silence would read as complicity.
The awkward optics matter because the Dodgers aren't just any franchise; they're the face of a metropolitan region that voted overwhelmingly against Trump and has positioned itself as a counterweight to his agenda on immigration, climate, and cultural issues. Standing up for L.A. at the White House isn't about confrontation for its own sake. It's about refusing to let the visit become a sanitized photo opportunity that papers over real differences.
What exactly that standing up looks like remains the open question hanging over Thursday's event. A quiet handshake may satisfy protocol, but it won't satisfy the half of Los Angeles that sees the visit as one more example of institutional deference to power. The Dodgers have a chance to show that representing the city means more than wearing the uniform.
The test is simple: go to the White House, but don't leave Los Angeles behind at the gate.
Original reporting: LA Times.
Original reporting: LA Times, California.
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