President Joe Biden hosted the Atlanta Braves at the White House on Monday to celebrate the team’s 2021 World Series victory.
The president welcomed the Major League Baseball team to the East Room this afternoon, ahead of the Braves opening a three-game series at 7:05 p.m. against the Washington Nationals.
“It’ll be a great experience. We’re world champions, and we get to go to the White House,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said last week when news of the planned visit was announced. “That’s kind of something special to get to tour and experience that. I think it’ll be something I’ll remember the rest of my life.”
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Biden has hosted several championship teams at the White House since taking office last year, with cheerful apolitical celebrations that have departed from the style of his predecessor, who turned the ceremonies into cultural flashpoints.
Donald Trump barred Steph Curry from attending a White House ceremony to celebrate the Golden State Warriors’ NBA championship in 2017 after he expressed concern with the then-president’s policies and rhetoric.
And Trump disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles from a celebration at the White House for the team’s Super Bowl victory after most players and coaches said they would boycott the visit after he demanded that NFL players stand during the national anthem.
The Braves, of course, are no stranger to political attention. The team’s plan to leave the city of Atlanta and build a complex in Cobb County sparked soul-searching in City Hall and a development boom surrounding the Braves’ new suburban home.
After Georgia’s Republican-led Legislature rewrote the state’s election laws in 2021, Biden and other politicians pushed Major League Baseball to boycott the All-Star game if it was still held at Truist Park.
When the league moved the game to Denver, Trump quickly called on his supporters to “boycott baseball” and other Republican officials lashed out at the league.
Still, the former president attended Game 4 of the World Series, holding court in a suite with Senate hopeful Herschel Walker.
Even now, the rift over the All-Star game still occasionally surfaces on the campaign trail, with Gov. Brian Kemp often saying the Braves’ triumph over the Houston Astros in the World Series was “poetic justice” after the city lost the showcase event.
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