Kiké Hernández on why he'll miss Dodgers' White House visit
· Yahoo Sports
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.
Visit extonnews.click for more information.
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.
Read more:Plaschke: Are the Dodgers tone deaf? White House visit is an insult to their fans
“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.
Read more:Dodgers scheduled to visit White House in late July to celebrate 2025 World Series win
“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.”
Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.