Obama celebrates World Series victory with Chicago Cubs at White House
President Obama on Monday celebrated 2016 World Series champion the Chicago Cubs at a White House event with the entire team.
“They said this day would never come,” Mr. Obama said from the ceremony in the East Room. “Welcome to the White House, the World Series Champion, Chicago Cubs!”
Without naming the Chicago White Sox, the president said that it’s “no secret that there is a certain Southside team that you know has my loyalty.” First lady Michelle Obama, however, is a “lifelong Cubs fan,” he said, and came to shake hands with the players before the event and tell them how much the Cubs meant to her in relating to her father while growing up.
“There were a lot of sick days during the playoffs,” Mr. Obama said about his White House staffers who were die-hard Cubs fans, adding that one of his staffers was even caught red-handed in a bar outside of Wrigley Field.
“We’re watching him being interviewed,” he said, “It’s like why aren’t you in the office?”
Mr. Obama praised a number of the key players as well as Theo Epstein, the Cubs’ president of baseball operations and former Boston Red Sox general manager.
“Theo, as you know, his job is to quench droughts -- 86 years in Boston, 108 in Chicago,” the president said. “He takes the reins of an organization that’s wandering in the wilderness, he delivers them to the promised land.”
“I’ve talked to him about being DNC chair,” Mr. Obama joked.
The president finished the event by emphasizing the power that sports has to “bring us together even when the country is divided.”
“Sports has changed attitudes and culture in ways that seem subtle but that ultimately made us think differently about ourselves and who we are,” he said. “There’s a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me standing here.”
The team presented Mr. Obama with a special “44” jersey honoring the president.