invitation

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had cancelled an earlier Saudi trip after deadly July 29 US-Saudi strikes on Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ⁠and Saudi Arabian Intelligence chief Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan have met in Baghdad in an attempt to resolve the governments’ ties strained by deadly cross-border strikes weeks earlier.

Al-Humaidan extended a renewed invitation for al-Zaidi to visit Riyadh in the meeting on Friday, the prime minister’s office said, after the latter’s earlier trip was called off in protest following a joint Saudi-US operation on July 29. The attacks killed 20 fighters of Iraqi armed groups, including five Iranians.

According to al-Zaidi’s office, the two focused on how Baghdad and Riyadh can better coordinate security issues as regional tensions simmer.

Al-Zaidi restated a pledge that Iraqi soil would not become a launchpad for attacks on any other country, and that Baghdad remains determined to guard its sovereignty.

The two countries have had a tense few weeks of diplomacy.

Saudi Arabia justified last month’s strikes on Iraq as retaliation for drone attacks on its oil infrastructure, which it blamed on the same pro-Iranian Iraqi armed groups.

Iraq’s National Security Council rejected the kingdom’s claim outright, calling the operation a breach of national sovereignty. In the days that followed, Iraqi authorities quietly tightened security across the country and along its borders to head off any retaliation.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq – the Iran-aligned network of armed groups that has clashed rhetorically with Riyadh in recent weeks – had promised to retaliate for the US-Saudi strikes.

But it announced on Friday that it was postponing a retaliatory strike, crediting the climbdown to lobbying from Hadi al-Amiri, one of the most powerful pro-Iran voices in Iraq, along with pressure from other unnamed political figures.

The group did not say what it had been preparing to hit.

Al-Zaidi, who took office earlier this year with Washington’s backing, has pledged to bring armed groups under state control and set a September 30 deadline for them to disarm.

His call has since faced opposition from powerful factions.

Iraq has long struggled to balance its ties with both the United States and Iran. The rivalry between Washington and Tehran has repeatedly turned the country into a proxy battleground.

What’s done is done.

The Dodgers went to the White House on Thursday and met with President Trump for the second year in a row, following back-to-back World Series championships.

At the time of their visit, the Dodgers had the best record in Major League Baseball with 65 wins and 38 losses. Winning three titles in a row won’t be easy, but assuming they pull off another victory in October, here are five reasons the Dodgers should not go back to the White House next year.

What’s the point?

Ceremonial visits have been going on for years, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have embraced the tradition with athletes from various sports.

If you’d like to know why I didn’t have anything to say in 2021, when the Dodgers visited President Biden at the White House, that’s a good question.

I didn’t dwell on it at the time because I think such visits are kind of ho-hum. But now we’ve had three visits in five years, and in my head, this hammers home the point that baseball players have nothing to gain from a visit. They’re baseball players, and as such, there is no higher honor than winning the World Series.

I like baseball, but it’s not like these guys are astronauts, just back from the moon.

If the Dodgers want to mark their achievement and honor the game of baseball in the nation’s capital, fine. They should go to the Smithsonian as a team and visit the display where Jackie Robinson’s jersey is enshrined.

They’re being put in an awkward position

As Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts put it in saying that he wouldn’t join his teammates, he couldn’t win either way.

“If I do” go, he said, “people are gonna hate me. If I don’t, people are gonna hate me.”

That’s an exaggeration, but I get his point. Dodger utility man Kiké Hernandez said he wasn’t going, either, explaining that he was busy rehabbing an injury.

The Dodgers should take the pressure off the players by politely declining an invitation to visit.

Besides, people like baseball because it’s an escape, a distraction, a diversion. You want to have a clear head as you try to remember why you willingly packed up your kids and paid $400 for lousy seats and food at Dodger Stadium to watch Kyle Tucker, at $60 million a year, foul out to the catcher.

You do not want to think about the American political cesspool as you watch the Dodgers rally from behind, win in late innings, and inch ever closer to going back to the White House again next year.

They’re being used

The players were apparently told they could make their own decision about whether to go to the White House.

What they should have been told was that they were being exploited.

When a president hosts a team at the White House, there is only one reason.

It’s a photo op.

Not for the team, but for the president.

Baseball might no longer be the national pastime, but it’s a part of American culture, with fans of every political stripe in every state. There’s kind of a folksy quality in the manufactured banter between a president and the ballplayers. He can fawn over them and joke with them and look more like a regular guy — one of the boys.

“This is really a special team,” Trump said during the Dodger visit. “It’s special winners. They’re champions, and just unbelievable.”

Yeah, we knew that when they beat the Blue Jays.

Nine months ago.

Too much ring kissing is a turnoff

If you are going to go, can you at least not embarrass yourself?

Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter handed Trump a Dodgers jersey and World Series ring at the White House. Somehow, he managed to restrain himself from bending to one knee and kissing the president’s ring.

“Thank you for welcoming us today, Mr. President,” Walter said. “We’re proud of that team and what it has achieved, and we hope to be back here again next year.”

As The Times’ Maddie Lee noted, this was just days after Bloomberg reported that “two insurance companies controlled by Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for potential financial improprieties.”

“No charges have been filed,” Lee wrote. “Representatives from the parent company of the insurance firms as well as from TWC Global — the Walter business empire that controls his sporting investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers — have told reporters they are cooperating with the investigation.”

So that’s another problem with the Dodgers’ visit.

How can we not wonder about ulterior motives?

It’s hard to keep track of who’s kissing whose ring.

Politics is unavoidable

The Dodger brain trust has attempted to cast White House visits as an exercise in tradition, not politics.

“Like I’ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the visit. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”

That couldn’t be more naive.

The Dodgers love to project a wholesome, family-friendly essence. But American discourse has not been more vulgar, polarizing or politicized in my lifetime, and I’m reminded of the line, “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

In Trump’s world, there are only two kinds of people: friends and foes. The Dodgers are now friends, and when Venezuelan World Series hero Miguel Rojas was singled out by Trump, who launched an unprovoked attack on his country, that reeked of calculated political staging.

The White House itself has been a staging ground for political assaults on the Dodgers’ home state and on immigrants who come from regions of the world that are home to some of the Dodger players. Election integrity has been politicized. The Supreme Court has been politicized. The water quality in the reflecting pool has been politicized. And at a White House cage fight, a former first lady was brazenly disparaged.

You can’t peel off your baseball uniform, put on your wedding suit, and stand there with the president, smiling and shaking hands and being voluntarily patronized, without having made a political statement.

Better to stick to what you know best.

And besides.

Trump is a Yankees fan.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — The Dodgers arrived at the White House on Thursday to celebrate their 2025 World Series championship following an invitation from President Trump.

The ceremony took place in the Rose Garden, with manager Dave Roberts selected to give a speech on behalf of the team.

It was the back-to-back champions’ second visit in as many years, but this trip came with scheduling complications. The timing for a visit didn’t work out when the Dodgers were in town to play the Nationals in April for a day-game laden series. So, they used their single off day on a three-city East Coast trip to make a pit stop in Washington, wedging the visit between games against the Phillies and Mets.

The decision to again visit the White House raised debate among Dodgers fans, who argue Trump’s anti-immigration policies have harmed many of the team’s supporters. But Roberts has continually tried to downplay the political messaging associated with the visit.

Mookie Betts and Kiké Hernández did not join the team for the visit, with Betts telling reporters he preferred to spend the day with his family and Hernandez saying he had a rehab assignment conflict but wouldn’t have joined the team if he was available. Hernández previously offered his support to fans affected by ICE raids in Los Angeles, while Betts said he didn’t want his decision to be viewed as political.

The Dodgers donated more than $1 million to local organizations assisting those affected by the ICE raids.

“This took a long time to get both sides together, and, honestly, like I’ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,” Roberts said when the trip was finalized this month. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”

The visit falls days after Bloomberg reported that two insurance companies controlled by Dodgers chairman Mark Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for potential financial improprieties.

No charges have been filed. Representatives from the parent company of the insurance firms as well as from TWC Global — the Walter business empire that controls his sporting investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers — have told reporters they are cooperating with the investigation.

Dodgers utility player Kiké Hernández confirmed Friday what he posted as a comment on Instagram: he won’t be going to the White House on July 23, when President Trump will honor the team for its 2025 World Series championship.

Instead, Hernández (strained left oblique) is scheduled to be on a minor-league rehab assignment.

“It’s going to be hard to be in two cities at the same time,” Hernández said. “If I was active, I probably wouldn’t have gone anyways.”

Why?

“I’d rather take a day off than do team activities,” he said.

Last year, Hernández expressed his support for immigrants in Los Angeles on social media amid ICE raids authorized by the Trump administration.

The White House visit will be on a day off in the middle of a nine-game East Coast trip.

“I’m sure a lot of guys are going to participate and be there, and this is an individual choice,” Roberts said. “But I do expect a lot of our guys to be there.”

Scheduling conflicts when the Dodgers played the Nationals in Washington on April 3-5 pushed back the trip.

“This took a long time to get both sides together, and, honestly, like I’ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,” Dodgers manager Roberts said. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”

Back in 2019, Roberts suggested that he might not accept an invitation to the White House with Trump in office. But he did attend last year when the Dodgers celebrated their 2024 title.

Roberts said the Dodgers found out earlier this week that the White House visit had been scheduled.

“There was a lot of unknown,” Roberts said. “It’s an off day, and then how could we work this out logistically?”

That set off “a lot of phone calls, texts, and communication internally.”

Hernández’s injury rehab has moved along more quickly than Roberts initially expected. He landed on the injury list in late May after playing in just two games following offseason surgery on his left elbow.

“He looks normal,” Roberts said last weekend. “I’m not saying miraculous, but I’m really in disbelief how well he responded, given the injury.”