Should the WBC be held in July vs. March?
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President Donald Trump said baseball is now “not as hot as it used to be” and said the sport is “doing the wrong thing.”
While welcoming Lionel Messi and MLS champion Inter Miami to the White House on Thursday, March 5, President Trump reflected on sports, saying that when “baseball was hot as a pistol,” he would often sit and watch games with the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
Mr. Trump joked that watching a three-hour game with Mr. Steinbrenner was the hardest he had ever seen. “(Steinbrenner) liked me, I liked him, and neither of us liked anyone else,” Trump said.
President Trump did not elaborate on what baseball is doing “wrong,” but he has previously accused MLB of being “woke.”
In his accusations about Steinbrenner, Trump berated his “friend” Alex Rodriguez, who was attending the event. Rodriguez, who won the World Series with the Yankees, was one of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history, but he was not inducted into the Hall of Fame because of his ties to performance-enhancing drugs.
Trump boasted of his friendship with Rodriguez in 2026 and hosted him in the Oval Office before Thursday’s event, but the president criticized the former MLB star on Twitter before entering politics.
President Trump called Rodriguez a “drug addict” and regularly advocated for him to be released from his contract with the Yankees. Trump even said that “drugs were the only thing” that made him a great player.
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