Washington Nationals closer Sean Doolittle will not attend the White House for a World Series celebration on Monday, he told the Washington Post.
Doolittle became the first Nats player to publicly decline president Donald Trump's invitation, telling the Post "There’s a lot of things, policies that I disagree with, but at the end of the day, it has more to do with the divisive rhetoric and the enabling of conspiracy theories and widening the divide in this country."
Doolittle has never been shy of his liberal beliefs, which first hit the spotlight in the summer of 2017, when he was traded to Washington and Trump was in his first year of office. Though it was always possible, a decision over a White House visit became inevitable when the Nationals won the World Series this week.