Since becoming president, Donald Trump has already disinvited two championship teams from visiting the White House: the Super Bowl LII winning Philadelphia Eagles, and the 2017 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors.
The Warriors lost their invite after the MVP Steph Curry and his teammates wouldn’t commit to attending the event.
“Not surprised,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said at the time. “He [Trump] was going to break up with us before we could break up with him.”
Trump also canceled an event with the Eagles after he learned that less than 10 players said they would attend.
Now, Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron says that he’d also refuse a trip to the White House if invited today for one simple reason: “There’s nobody there I want to see,” he told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution while speaking at the Hank Aaron Champion for Justice Awards, adding, “I can understand where the players are coming from. I really do. I understand they have their own issues and things they feel conviction about. They have a right to that, and I probably would be the same way, there’s no question about it.”
As someone who spent two decades in the limelight, Aaron appreciates the activism of today’s stars.
“To be honest, I feel somewhat guilty that I didn’t do possibly as much as I could have done,” Aaron said. “We didn’t get to where we are today because we kept our mouth closed or scratched our head and sat and didn’t do anything. If you have an opinion, then you should voice it and let people know that is your opinion and you’re not speaking for anybody but yourself.”
On this date in 1974: Hank Aaron hit No. 715 to pass Babe Ruth for No. 1 on the all-time home run list. pic.twitter.com/AUd7wbGaIB
— ESPN (@espn) April 8, 2018
Although Aaron may not have been outspoken in his playing days, he faced a vicious campaign of hate with a dignity that was louder than words. While chasing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record in the early ‘70s, bigots from across the country sent him so much hate mail, the U.S. post office gave him a plaque for receiving more letters than any other American (not including politicians).
As the biggest star on the first Major League Baseball team in the Deep South, Aaron also broke racial boundaries.
“He became the first black man for whom white fans in the South cheered,” said Georgia native and former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter. “A humble man who did not seek the limelight, he just wanted to play baseball, which he did exquisitely.”
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.