Mr. Bochy Goes to Washington: Dallas Champs Meet the President

There’s a reason that the great Eric Nadel, the Texas Rangers radio broadcaster of many decades, exclaimed “Ranger fans, you’re not dreaming!” when the team finally won its first-ever World Series title in November. It still very much feels like a dream. Maybe it still feels that way since it’s beginning to look less and less likely that the club will be able to defend its title thanks to a subpar 2024 so far.

But that really doesn't matter. Today offered yet another bit of somewhat surreal proof that the triumph of 2023 was very much a real thing that happened when Bruce Bochy and his players paid a visit to the East Room of the White House.

"Dallas-Fort Worth and the entire Metroplex," Biden said with the team, all in suits, stood behind him. "You are used to winning championships. I noticed that."

The president also attempted to show himself as a knowledgeable baseball fan by flashing some facts from last season.

"The American League West was as tough as it's ever been," he said. "The division race was decided on the last day. You may not have clinched the division, you certainly got the last word in."

It sounds like they’re playing Higher by Creed on the violin at the White House 😂

Via @LesleyMcCaslin pic.twitter.com/1Hs5mAzLF3

— Rangers Nation ⚾️ (@rangers__nation) August 8, 2024

After a few words from General Manager Chris Young, Bochy presented Biden with a number 46 Rangers jersey and a pretty kick-ass pair of black cowboy boots with the Rangers logo embroidered on them.

Of course, the Rangers are the final major Dallas-area pro team to make the post-title pilgrimage to the nation’s capital to visit the commander in chief, not that it's been a terribly regular trip for local teams.

The Dallas Mavericks were the last local team before this week to get all dressed up and present the prez with the obligatory jersey featuring his last name on the back. (The Mavs gave then-President Barack Obama a number 23 jersey, probably in honor of Michael Jordan, a legend from Obama’s Chicago stomping grounds.)

And before you go there, we are not counting visits by Cowboys players to a different, notorious white house.

Before 2011, one must scroll back a good distance to see a Dallas team gather around the most powerful man in the world for an awkward group photo. The Dallas Stars took the Stanley Cup to see Bill Clinton in March 2000, and the powerhouse Dallas Cowboys of the mid-’90s paid Clinton, old college buddy of team owner Jerry Jones, visits in 1993, 1994 and 1996.

According to Yahoo Sports, championship baseball teams have made presidential visits for more than 150 years, dating back to the Andrew Johnson administration, although triumphant NBA teams didn't start getting a presidential audience until the Boston Celtics visited John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Let’s take a look at how the visits went when Dallas pro sports teams visited the White House over the years.

Dallas Cowboys (1993)

Dallas Cowboys 1994

Dallas Cowboys (1996)

Dallas Stars (2000)

Due to presidential scheduling conflicts, the team didn’t visit the White House until near the end of the 2000 regular season to celebrate its 1999 Stanley Cup victory. Video of the encounter is hard to come by, but an AP report noted at the time that Clinton, reportedly the first U.S. president to attend an NHL hockey game, said that “hockey is a lot like politics. It’s a tough game.” One Canadian journalist, surely annoyed that a team from the south had finally taken control of the cherished, storied Stanley Cup, wrote a salty but slightly humorous column detailing how he thinks the presidential meeting between an Arkansas man and a bunch of Texans went.

Dallas Mavericks (2012)