The Los Angeles Dodgers didn’t stay at their usual place of lodging in Chicago, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, to take on the Cubs in the National League Championship Series, but one of their players hasn’t stayed there at all this season.
When the Dodgers visited Chicago during the regular season in June, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez went ahead and got his own hotel room elsewhere. Gonzalez confirmed as much to reporters Sunday.
“IÂ didn’t stay there,” Gonzalez said, per the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin’s J.P. Hoornstra. “I had my reasons.”
Gonzalez doesn’t need to state his reasons for them to be pretty obvious. The 34-year-old is a first generation Mexican-American and while he was born in San Diego, he spent some of his younger years with his family in Tijuana, where his father had an air conditioning business. Gonzalez’s family returned to California when the first baseman was about 8 years old, but his Mexican heritage still is a major part of his life, as he’s played for the Mexican national team in the World Baseball Classic and regularly gives back to the country through charity.
The Trump International Hotel and Tower is owned by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (duh), who has made building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and making our southern neighbors pay for it a huge part of his campaign. Trump also asserted early in his campaign that Mexicans were bringing drugs and crime to the U.S. and called them rapists, so you can see why Gonzalez wouldn’t want to stay in one of his hotels.
Still, Gonzalez isn’t necessarily trying to make a statement.
“We’re here to play baseball not talk politics,” Gonzalez said.
As for the Dodgers, their reasons for not staying in the hotel for the NLCS weren’t political. Per Hoornstra, the hotel required a non-refundable deposit to hold a block of rooms, and the Dodgers obviously weren’t sure if they’d need them before their NL Division Series against the Washington Nationals.
Thumbnail photo via Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports Images
