TRUMP’S AGENTS ARE EYEING DODGER STADIUM, WHERE IMMIGRATION IS WILDFIRE
The President sees wreckage and doesn’t care about Mark Walter’s $10 billion purchase of the Lakers, with white vans and SUVs arriving at Chavez Ravine
The intersection of Vin Scully Avenue near Stadium Way would be a hellish place for an immigration clash. Fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers are Latinos, Japanese, Koreans, Blacks, Whites, you name it. If President Trump wants a multicultural riot, he would use ICE agents and the National Guard troops he still controls and send them back to the ballpark, which is what happened with white vans and SUVs by locked gates Thursday.
And if his people ventured into the home clubhouse, they would find Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Teoscar Hernandez, Kim Hye-seong, Andy Pages, Miguel Rojas and others they could question. Might those players be told to leave the United States? They would include Ohtani, who is paid $700 million a season by an owner, Mark Walter, who is paying more than $10 billion for the Lakers? It does not matter, in the current rage, how valuable a man might be.
In what remains a haunting location for possible dangerous activity, Trump is using “Blue Heaven on Earth.” It also is known as Chavez Ravine, where Mexican-Americans once were removed from the neighborhood so Dodger Stadium could be built. Was Trump playing his own ballgame hours after Walter’s new franchise purchase was announced? The Dodgers announced they had halted the agents.
“This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization,” the team said.
Not true, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said: “False. We were never there.” So who was? The Department of Homeland Security said Customs and Border Protection agents were present. “This had nothing to do with the Dodgers. CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement," the agency said.
This is disturbing news for the 50,000 folks who visit the stadium. Are they walking into madness? Thursday night, Trump won an appeals-court ruling that allows him to control National Guard troops. Who needs downtown wreckage? Why not disrupt the Dodgers and their potpourri of fans? Wrote the court: “The undisputed facts demonstrate that before the deployment of the National Guard, protesters ‘pinned down’ several federal officers and threw ‘concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects’ at the officers. Protesters also damaged federal buildings and caused the closure of at least one federal building. And a federal van was attacked by protesters who smashed in the van’s windows. The federal government’s interest in preventing incidents like these is significant.”
Later, when the Dodgers were playing the rival San Diego Padres, a small protest crowd rambled against Trump. “ICE out of L.A.,” said one sign, while another said: “If a felon can be president, then an immigrant can be a citizen.”
Inside a raucous stadium, the teams brawled in the ninth inning after Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. was hit by the Dodgers for the third time in recent days. The two managers, Dave Roberts of the Dodgers and Mike Shildt of the Padres, wanted to exchange blows as they screamed at each other. Later, as the Padres finished out a 5-3 victory, Ohtani was hit high by closer Robert Suarez and ordered his teammates to remain in the dugout. The melee didn’t help the general mood.
“It’s a good baseball rivalry. I don’t want it to get to the point where it got to and acclerated to tonight,” Shildt said. “(Roberts) came out, and that’s it. Enough is enough. This guy is taking shots. Teams I manage don’t take anything. You’re messing with people’s careers, messing with people’s seasons. (Tatis) is our dude. And I’ve got him.”
“Well, I think (Ohtani) knew it was intentional. He didn’t want any more drama, which I respect a lot,” Roberts said. “As (Shildt) came out, he’s yelling at me and staring me down. That bothers me.”
Said Padres third baseman Manny Machado: “They gotta pray for results to come back negative tomorrow. They should. Us, too, but they should for sure.”
Was anyone safe anywhere? And what happens next, with the Dodgers hosting the Washington Nationals for three games? In the Oval Office, Trump was blown off by members of the Juventus soccer team, including Team USA players Weston McKennie and Timothy Weah. “A bit weird,” Weah said. “When (Trump) started talking about all the politics with Iran and everything, it’s kind of like, I just want to play football, man.”
Once, McKennie said: “I don’t think that Trump is the right one for the job as the president. I think he’s ignorant. I don’t support him a bit. I don’t think he’s a man to stand by his word. In my eyes, you can call him racist.”
Even in the NBA Finals, the commotion of Walter impacted matters. Somehow, the Indiana Pacers blew out the Oklahoma City Thunder, 108-91. Should we find fireworks? The seventh game arrives only a few nights before July 4, or about three months before the start of training camps. Michael Jordan never required the entirety of a schedule to win a title. The Thunder and Pacers need it, and with no real apologies to John Mellencamp and Pat McAfee — who haven’t brawled yet — my sense and maybe yours is that Indiana will lose Sunday night. Sorry to Mike Pence.
“We've got one game,” Tyrese Haliburton said. “One game. Nothing that's happened before matters. And nothing that's going to happen after matters.”
“The way I see it is we sucked tonight,” said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who committed eight of Oklahoma City’s 21 turnovers. "We need to learn the lessons, and we have one game for everything we worked for, and so do they. The better team Sunday will win.”
The Thunder will win at home. And early cheers to general manager Sam Presti, who soon might be getting an urgent phone call from Walter. Isn’t that what this basketball series ultimately is about: a new wave in Oklahoma City eventually being trounced by a league filled with multi-billionaires? Presti once recorded a jazz-rap album. Turns out finishing off the Pacers is harder. He has pieced together Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams more than a decade after merging Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden — doing so in America’s 48th-largest market. But what if Walter swoops in and gives Presti megamilions to move west, where he can spend “second-apron” finances on Giannis Antetokounmpo and whatever stars are available.
Drama in Indianapolis was muted by the ferocious sale of the Lakers for ungodly sums. We wonder if the league’s new monster owners will spend so intensely that the Thunder eventually will be turned silent. The commissioner has ways of punishing mass splurgers, but with 11 years of TV money about to emerge at $77 billion, there are reasons why Phoenix and other franchises face luxury-tax limbo. We now will include Walter, whose wherewithal will overtake Jeanie Buss, who ran the Lakers as her father did — piece by piece, in the name the family — when we’re in 2025.
He will spend. Luka Doncic will stay put at an all-time maximum. LeBron James might stay two more seasons. Walter will bring Dodgermania to Crypto.com Arena, unless he builds a new palace, and the idea is to keep using his extreme investments. Enough with sorry stories under Buss, such as an inability to keep Alex Caruso became of salary concerns and an application for small-business federal relief — $4.6 million — during COVID-19. Bring in the data people and scouts. Bring in the many folks who work under Andrew Friedman at Dodger Stadium. Buss will remain the governor, but not for long. Presti will be mentioned. Bob Myers will be mentioned.
Ask the Dodgers, the exultant form of sports champions. “I think he does everything he can to provide resources, support. He wants to win,” Roberts said of Walter. “He feels that the fans, the city, deserves that. I think that’s never lost. It’s more challenging to become better and not complacent or stagnant and continue to stay current with the market and the competition to win — not only now but for as far as we can see out. … He wanted to infuse his intelligence, his resources. He just wanted more skin in the game. He’s obviously a very smart person.”
After the Dodgers won their second World Series in five years, baseball boss Friedman met with Walter. “Mark’s mindset was to be even more aggressive. He was like, ‘Hey, let’s keep going,’ ’’ he told The Athletic.
What Walter has done this week is shake up Donald Trump, Major League Baseball and the NBA. The leagues, he can handle.
Trump? Wouldn’t he love to rub out a baseball game? Or send Ohtani to Japan?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.