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Maybe it's time to let the tradition of visiting the White House end
"God Bless America" has scaled back, maybe this visit should too
Aaron Somers
April 07, 2025
Sometimes, it’s okay to end a tradition when it’s become less meaningful.
Take, for instance, the singing of “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch.
For most, our collective memory is of the league initiating the idea late in the 2001 season, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. It was universally and immediately accepted as part of our new way of life; one of many new ways we all stood proud to demonstrate our patriotism.
We all welcomed it.
The whole concept grew legs and expanded far beyond anyone’s expectations. In 2019, Paul Lukas at Uni-Watch talked to the man responsible for the idea, John Dever, about the origins and how quickly it spread throughout the league:
“Right. And we had some talk in the office about how we had to do something different. It couldn’t just be a normal day. So I was in this meeting, and I probably didn’t talk the whole meeting. And I think maybe we talked about doing something after the national anthem — that was going to be a big moment. And I remember thinking that the national anthem is about a battle, okay? And maybe it was just a day to not — a day to be more peaceful. So I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we think about another song that speaks to America that people in the ballpark can kind of unify around?’”
I still wanted to play the national anthem, don’t get me wrong. But I think “God Bless America” came into my head. And then I thought, you know, people’s attention spans are only so long. If we do two straight songs — the national anthem and then another one — that’s a lot. So I said, ‘You know, is anoyone really going to be happy today, or gleeful? Instead of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” why don’t we put this other song in there [the seventh inning stretch] and see if that works.’ And people liked it. So that was the plan, just to do it at our stadium.
But what happened was, Larry Lucchino was our president and CEO at the time, and there was an owner’s meeting in Milwaukee, so Larry had headed there to meet with Bud Selig and the owners.
…..
He had to leave the day before, and I think he might even have been the only owner, or one of the few owners, who’d arrived by then. And of course he saw what was happening and checked in, so Charles Steinberg, my boss, relayed the [“God Bless America”] idea to Larry. And he said, "Wow, that’s pretty good. I’m gonna let Commissioner Selig know about that.”
The interview is extensive and fascinating. Dever talks more about the process leading up to this meeting, how nobody had thought about doing it more than that first weekend back, and even about other songs that were considered. Dever never received credit from MLB for suggesting it, but he’s okay with that.
Shortly after the league started incorporating “God Bless America” into the seventh inning stretch everywhere, the New York Yankees “took it mainstream and perfected it.”
The tradition became overkill after a while. Eventually, the league and most teams relaxed how frequently the song was featured — with the seventh inning routine mostly returning to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in most ballparks. Many will still play “God Bless America,” but they will only do so on Sundays, holidays, or other special events.
Yankee Stadium is the only one that still plays the song during every game.
The World Series Champion Dodgers visited the White House on Monday. Clayton Kershaw gave a speech and presented President Trump with a custom no. 47 jersey. Shohei Ohtani met one-on-one in the Oval Office with him.
According to Yahoo! Sports’ Chris Cwik, even Dave Roberts and Mookie Betts attended. Both have been vocal in the past against Trump but elected to attend to “avoid their absence being a storyline.”
It was just a month ago that this administration tried to remove pages about Jackie Robinson’s history — including his military past — from government websites.
It’s another tradition we can likely consider ending.
ESPN’s Thomas Neumann wrote extensively about the “American tradition” of championship teams visiting the White House in March 2016, including noting the following about when it all began:
The tradition of sports teams visiting the White House dates to at least Aug. 30, 1865, when President Andrew Johnson welcomed the Brooklyn Athletics and Washington Nationals amateur baseball clubs. Ulysses S. Grant played host to the first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in 1869. The first World Series championship team feted at the White House is believed to be the 1924 Washington Senators, who visited Calvin Coolidge at the executive residence the following year.
As Neumann examined, much of the impetus to expand the tradition was due to the sitting presidents themselves. It was Ronald Reagan who first sought to invite the championship teams from each of the major pro sports. George H. Bush initiated an annual ceremony to recognize all of the NCAA’s Division I championship teams.
Most of those collegiate teams receive their own invitations these days. The UConn Huskies women’s basketball teams have visited the most, after nine of their ten championships (scheduling issues prevented the team from attending in 2000).
The UConn women won their 11th championship on Sunday and will surely add to that record.
It’s hard to convey why the tradition should be allowed to come to an end without getting political. After all, the very concerns that have been raised (and reasons there have been objection or hesitation about visiting by some players) over the last decade-plus that have spiraled the country into divisiveness are political in nature.
Therein lies some of the hypocrisy of the whole situation, though, too. Roberts and Betts attended because they didn’t “want the story to be their absence,” but isn’t peer-pressuring two black men into attending just as poor a story? Isn’t it really worse?
The scapegoat excuse is to lean on the president’s limited schedule. What’s the point of taking so much time out of it for these ceremonies when there is so much work to be done? Perusing some of Monday’s headlines from the Associated Press and the stock market is continuing to freefall (thanks to the president’s tariffs and trade war), there is widespread flooding (with federal aid agencies gutted), and a measles outbreak continues.
That’s just domestically. But President Trump took a break to meet with the Dodgers. There were probably more important things he could have been focused on.
Now, I’ll admit I’m not a fan of Trump, but “objections to the president” are not exclusive to him. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Perhaps if players were more freely able to skip these visits — without fear of being persecuted, or even simply being labeled a poor teammate, for doing so — then I wouldn’t object to the tradition so much, but it’s tough to see what the point is now.
It’s time to let the tradition end.
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