SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D3
relief efforts, including meals in
Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurri-
cane Maria in 2017, has criticized
the Trump administration’s re-
sponse to that storm. Andrés
threw out the ceremonial first
pitch at the World Series game
Trump attended.
Like many baseball teams, the
Nationals have a diverse roster,
including players from Ven-
ezuela, the Dominican Republic,
Brazil and Cuba. None of the
players have appeared to criti-
cize the president in public, how-
ever, and although team owners
Ted and Mark Lerner are Demo-
crats, they also have not criti-
cized Trump publicly.
“He has every right to come,”
Mark Lerner told The Post ahead
of Trump’s appearance at
Game 5. “He’s the president of
the United States whether you
like him or not. It’s a special
event. He should be at it.”
[email protected]
[email protected]dent has not invited the Wash-
ington Mystics, who won the
WNBA title this year.
Trump, accompanied by first
lady Melania Trump and several
Republican members of Con-
gress, attended Game 5 of the
World Series last weekend at
Nationals Park. He received a
mixed reaction from the sellout
crowd of more than 42,000 fans,
including a loud chorus of boos.
Chants of “Lock him up!” were
audible in parts of the stadium.
Trump critics have lobbied the
Nationals not to visit the White
House. Nate Mook, executive di-
rector of World Central Kitchen,
founded by celebrity chef José
Andrés, tweeted Thursday that
the team should not visit the
White House and mocked Trump
for serving fast food to some
sports teams.
Instead, the Nationals should
“really just go over to” Andrés’s
house for dinner, Mook wrote.
Andrés, who has helped organizeWarriors, who won the NBA title
in 2017 and 2018, met privately
with former president Barack
Obama. It was an implicit rebuke
of Trump, who had rescinded an
invitation to the team in 2017
after star guard Stephen Curry
said he was not interested in
visiting.
Trump has hosted the past two
World Series champions — the
2017 Astros and the 2018 Boston
Red Sox. But the Red Sox were
sharply divided along racial
lines, with most minority players
choosing not to attend. Members
of the U.S. women’s national
soccer team, which won the
World Cup this summer, stated
publicly that they would not
accept an invitation to the White
House, and the president has not
offered one.
In March, Trump hosted the
Washington Capitals, who won
the Stanley Cup last year, holding
a photo op with the players in the
Oval Office. However, the presi-Clymer, a press secretary at the
Human Rights Campaign, wrote
on Twitter. “They don’t back
down when it comes to equality.
They know what’s at stake for
marginalized communities in
this country, and they take that
seriously.”
Presidents have been celebrat-
ing sports champions on a regu-
lar basis since Ronald Reagan’s
administration, and athletes
have occasionally opted out for
political reasons.
But the ceremonies have be-
come more politicized in the
Trump era as some high-profile
teams have said they are not
interested in visiting because of
objections to the president’s pol-
icies. Perhaps fearful of public
rejections, the White House has
declined to invite other teams,
including those from the WNBA,
a league whose champions had
traditionally received invitations
under previous presidents.
In January, the Golden Statedeclined....
“I feel like there are a lot of
issues, a lot of things that have
been said, a lot of things that
have been said by the president,
a lot of things that have been
done by the administration that I
can’t, no matter what, I can’t
reconcile with what I believe in,
what I feel very strongly about.... There’s a lot of things, policies
that I disagree with, but at the
end of the day it has more to do
with the divisive rhetoric and the
enabling of conspiracy theories
and widening the divide in this
country.”
“This is not one bit surprising
for LGBTQ Nats fans because
we’ve long been supported by”
Doolittle and Dolan, Charlotte
and rolled back rights for LGBTQ
communities, including impos-
ing restrictions on military serv-
ice for transgender Americans.
“People say you should go
because it’s about respecting the
office of the president, and I
think over the course of his time
in office he’s done a lot of things
that maybe don’t respect the
office,” Doolittle told The
Washington Post.
“I don’t want people to think I
took the decision lightly, but I
also didn’t want to go and be a
distraction in any way to anyone
who wanted to have that experi-
ence,” he continued. “I just fig-
ured it was best if I respectfully
NATIONALS FROM D1
baseball
BY SAM FORTIERhouston — Juan Soto was not
satisfied with a hat. He was danc-
ing in the clubhouse Wednesday
night, celebrating the Washington
Nationals’ Game 7 victory over the
Houston Astros, when an idea
struck. Soto scooped up the World
Series trophy and, though it
weighs 30 pounds, held it as some-
one else might a toy. He kept danc-
ing, swiveling his hips like he does
in the batter’s box and making a
whooping noise that sounded like
a siren. He grinned and put the
trophy atop his head. The most
coveted hunk of metal in baseball,
with 30 gold-plated flags jutting
upward, looked like a crown.
Soto had done to himself what
the rest of the baseball world did
to him throughout the playoffs.
But the phenom’s postseason per-
formance was unsurprising to
those who watched the Nationals
this year. Here, on the national
stage, he had risen to the moment:
clutch hits late in elimination
games, the youngest player ever to
homer three times in one World
Series, an unusual display of confi-
dence. He did things that defied
expectation for any ballplayer, es-
pecially one as young as him. His
actions often left those watching
without words, so they turned to
numbers, and his age (21) was
repeated until it had basically
become a meme.
Manager Dave Martinez said
Soto drank his first beer the night
the Nationals won the World Se-
ries. Even if that’s not true, the
point is that it’s possible. Here was
a kid who wasn’t a professional
baseball player five years ago, and
now he found himself not only on
the sport’s biggest stage but amid
the MVP conversation. He hom-
ered off allegedly untouchable
aces, flustered one of the game’s
most respected managers and
wore a boyish grin throughout.
A bat has always defined Soto.
He now uses an Old Hickory AJ25,
maple and 34 inches, but used to
swing whatever he could find.
Hitting got him noticed as a kid in
the Dominican Republic. It got the
Nationals to sign him at 16 for
$1.5 million, a franchise record on
the international market. It got
him from rookie ball to the majors
in less than two years, and he
bypassed Class AAA altogether.
He became so dangerous that
teams eventually took the bat out
of his hands. The Astros, adherent
to analytics, hadn’t intentionallywalked a single batter all season —
until Soto forced them to do so in
Game 176.
Perhaps the most remarkable
part of his postseason was how he
evolved over the course of it. Soto
was typically timely in the wild-
card game — a game-winning hit
in the eighth — but then he slid.
Through nine postseason games,
his batting average was just .206,
though the hitter who strugglesagainst left-handers and sliders
snapped out of his funk to tie the
do-or-die NLDS Game 5 on a slider
from perhaps the greatest left-
handed pitcher of his generation
(Clayton Kershaw). He later spent
one long night in the batting cage
to bust the slump. The adjust-
ments transformed him into, by
the numbers, the best hitter in the
World Series. He had changed by
staying the same. This October, upthen down then up again, was
basically his career compressed
into a month.
The national stage seemed to
relax him. Soto admitted one day
during the playoffs that his pecu-
liar, between-pitch routine — lick-
ing his lips, swiping his feet, grab-
bing his crotch — wasn’t for the
reason he initially claimed. The
Soto Shuffle was less tic, more
tactic; the young hitter wanted tointimidate pitchers. The approach
clashed with the hallowed unwrit-
ten rules of baseball, and one
pitcher who got him out grabbed
his crotch in response. But the
shuffle became a focal point, and
some fans began to focus on his
takes as much as his hits.
One at-bat of the postseason per-
haps best captured Soto. Astros
pitcher Justin Verlander, probably
a future Hall of Famer, challenged
him in the fifth inning of Game 6 up
and in with a fastball. Soto shuffled
and chirped. Verlander tried again
on the next pitch, and Soto hit a
moonshot. Then Soto possessed
the wherewithal to follow the lead-
seizing, series-changing shot by
carrying his bat to first base. The
move appeared to troll Houston’s
Alex Bregman, who had done the
same earlier in the game, but Soto
apparently didn’t intend to. He had
seen Bregman’s move and said he
thought: “That was pretty cool. I
want to do that.” The blast, the
innocence, the showmanship — it
was all Soto. It could be his endur-
ing moment.
One video of the home run,
though, stands out. It’s not him
mic’d up on the field. It’s not the
pitcher’s mortified reaction. It’s not
a side-by-side comparison of bat-
carries to first base. It’s a scene
captured in the Dominican Repub-
lic showing two of Soto’s childhood
coaches. They leap off a couch and
scream and clap and cry. One of
them falls to his knees, tilts his
head skyward and thanks God.
The scene didn’t only play out
there. Soto’s magical playoff run
seemed to bring together those
who knew him best and those who
didn’t know him at all.
Note: The Nationals declined a
mutual contract option on first
baseman Matt Adams on Friday.
The 31-year-old, who received a
$1 million buyout and became a
free agent, hit .226 with 20 home
runs and 56 RBI in the regular
season. He made four plate ap-
pearances in the postseason, in-
cluding one in the World Series.
[email protected]Soto became a household name in October by rising when it mattered most
Champions, sans Doolittle,
are set to visit White House
SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POSTTONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
In seven games against the Astros, Nationals slugger Juan Soto became the youngest player to hit three home runs in a World Series.A keepsake
worth fighting for
Fans line up outside
Nationals Park on Friday
to trade digital
World Series tickets for
paper ones. The team’s
championship parade is
Saturday.