Five months after celebrating in the East Room with former President Barack Obama, a few Chicago Cubs players, coaches and executives partook in a modest celebration in the West Wing with President Donald Trump.
Typically, World Series champions schedule their visit during series’ with either the Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles.
This is the second round of celebrating the Cubs have done in the nation’s capital. Just days before Obama left office, the Cubs and team president Theo Epstein, gave the former president a “midnight pardon” for his White Sox fandom.
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The timing couldn’t have been scheduled better for the Cubs. They’re currently in the middle of a four-game series with the Nationals and are looking to shake off the early season woes which have plagued the team of late.
Visiting the White House provides the team an opportunity to get their minds off of the field and celebrate all the monumental successes they had in 2016.
Time to turn the page
President Trump acknowledged the team’s recent struggles as well.
“Your team’s doing OK,” he said with a tempered voice. “But you’re going to do great starting now, right?”
Hopefully, the president is right.
Those in attendance presented Trump with a gold “45” jersey and a scoreboard placard with the same number in the Oval Office.
Trump even remarked about how he tried to bring Cubs owner Tom Ricketts into his administration as deputy Commerce Secretary.
“But after about 9,000 pages of filings, he said, nah, I don’t want to be,” the president said lightheartedly.
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The entire team did not attend the celebration. Manager Joe Maddon and stars Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, John Lackey and Jon Lester were among the notables in attendance.
Players who decided to sit-out of the celebration are not voicing a vindication of the president. But, merely, some players decided to take the afternoon to rest before facing Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg in tonight’s contest.