One day you’re telling yourself that at least the billionaire owner of your local newspaper hasn’t thrown in with Donald Trump. The next day a group of players from the baseball team he owns are lined up in the Oval Office, shaking hands with the president on the very day that Congress passed the worst piece of legislation in our lifetime.
Apparently we’ve already moved on from the news that a group of Red Sox players were greeted by Trump on Thursday during what has been described as a family visit. News accounts have been sketchy on the details, and it seems that no one is inclined to follow up. They should. I mean, this is Boston, and it’s the Red Sox, not the Trump-supporting Patriots. Has our favorite fourth-place, below-.500 team gone MAGA?
Here’s what we know, according to Chris Cotillo of MassLive. Thursday was an off-day before the Red Sox’ Fourth of July game against the Washington Nationals. A number of players decided to visit the White House as part of their annual family outing. Margo Martin, part of Trump’s communications team, posted a 17-second video on Twitter (you can watch it above) of 10 players shaking hands with the president. Those players were Trevor Story, Justin Wilson, Abraham Toro, Romy Gonzalez, Connor Wong, Greg Weissert, Wilyer Abreu, Garrett Whitlock, Brennan Bernardino and Rob Refsnyder. If there were any others, they haven’t been identified.
Not everyone on the team attended. Garrett Crochet posted a photo of a panda that he took while visiting the zoo, which may or may not have been intended as a zing at his teammates. Also missing were manager Alex Cora, coaches and team officials. This appears to have been an unofficial visit — an extremely embarrassing unofficial visit.
“It was scheduled as an apolitical, behind-the-scenes tour with no expectations of publicity or meeting President Trump, a source familiar with the visit said,” the Globe’s Tim Healey reported. Whether that source is being straight with Healey or not, at least the Sox realize this is not something they want to associate themselves with. As they say, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
The Globe’s owner, John Henry, is a billionaire financier, and he’s also the principal owner of the Red Sox. That’s what makes this so dicey. Unlike Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times, the Globe has remained a liberal paper, and its editorial pages enthusiastically endorsed Kamala Harris for president last year. Henry and his wife, Globe Media CEO Linda Pizzuti Henry, are regarded as politically liberal. Any signs of slippage would be alarming, which is why I hope that Thursday’s White House visit was just something that 10 players did on their own.
Still, I’d like to see more reporting.