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Whenever the Dodgers roll into the Chicago to play the Cubs (or the White Sox, sometimes), they have typically stayed at the Trump International Hotel and Tower. However, when the Boys in Blue visited the Cubs back in May, there was one team member to who decided to find his own accommodations.
"I didn't stay there," first baseman Adrian Gonzalez told the Inland Valley Bulletin . "I had my reasons."
Gonzalez doesn't elaborate on these reasons, but perhaps the Mexican-American slugger (who holds dual citizenship) didn't want to patronize a hotel owned by a racist wannabe-despot who is running his presidential campaign partly on the platform that he believes Mexican immigrants are criminals, drug dealers and rapists ?
Perhaps.
Athletes tend not to be politically outspoken, especially baseball players. But this isn't the first time Gonzalez has taken a stand. As Vice Sports points out , Gonzalez spoke out against Arizona's controversial anti-immigrant law SB 1070 , telling the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2010 that it was "immoral" and "discrimination." He even threatened to boycott the 2011 All-Star Game being held in Phoenix—but he ended up playing and even participated in the Home Run Derby, too.
And if you're wondering, the Dodgers did not stay at Trump Tower over the weekend when they played the Cubs in the National League Championship Series. But as the Inland Valley Bulletin points out, it wasn't because Trump is a garbagemonster of a human being. Whether they needed these rooms hinged on the outcome of the previous series against the Washington Nationals—which wrapped on Thursday night—and Trump Tower needed a non-refundable deposit to hold the rooms they needed. The Dodgers ultimately made arrangements with another hotel.
The NLCS is currently tied at 1-1 and Gonzalez, by the way, is hitting .429 in the series with one home run and 3 RBIs.
The series resumes in Los Angeles on Tuesday and Chavez Ravine will ring once again with his sweet at-bat music:
