The Dodgers took their championship visit to the White House on Thursday and handed President Donald Trump a jersey with his name and No. 47 on the back, along with a replica World Series ring. It was the sort of ceremonial stop reigning champions make before moving on, and for a team still on the road, it came just before heading to Queens for the weekend.
Trump marked the moment with a speech that wandered from the title to Shohei Ohtani, calling his Game 4 performance from last year's NLCS "the greatest game ever played by one person" and saying, "I’ll meet a man who’s just about the best pitcher, and just about the best hitter in baseball, and just about the best fielder in the outfield in baseball." He added, "I guess he had a game where he pitched almost a perfect game," a line that made clear he was talking about Ohtani as if the two-way star were an outfielder.
The number on Trump’s jersey was the detail that raised eyebrows. No explanation was offered for why the Dodgers chose 47, only that the team made the gift during the visit. The gesture landed alongside the ring, turning the meeting into more than a polite photo op and making the White House stop part presentation, part souvenir handoff.
The visit also sat next to the more ordinary grind of the season. Dalton Rushing broke out of an 0-19 slump on Wednesday, going 2-4 with a home run and three RBI in the Dodgers’ 9-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. Dave Roberts said Rushing is "learning on the run, learning on the job, thrust into it," and added that the last couple weeks of struggles should help him later, whether at bat, behind the plate, or in game planning. On the same stretch of days, Max Muncy hit his 228th home run as a Dodger and tied Ron Cey on the franchise list, while Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his pending Wednesday start in Philadelphia because of discomfort in his left knee, with no timetable yet for his return to the rotation.
So the White House stop did what these visits always do: it fixed the team in the frame of a title defense, while leaving one small detail hanging. The jersey, the ring and the speech were all public. Why the Dodgers settled on No. 47 for Trump was not.
