It’s the Fall Classic. The Washington Nationals announced today that José Andrés — the full-time restauranteur and part-time Donald Trump antagonist — will throw out the first pitch at the World Series game that the president plans to attend. Andrés will be given the ceremonial honor before game five on Sunday, if the Houston Astros can make it that far. (The Nationals are currently up 2-0 in the best of seven series.) If it does, Trump presumably will be fuming in a box seat somewhere, furiously dipping blackened steak into a bowl of ketchup.
A Washington, D.C., restaurateur who earlier this year opened Mercado Little Spain in New York, Andrés is also the founder of the humanitarian nonprofit World Central Kitchen and has, in recent years, been a Trump antagonist. Back in 2016 — which feels, roughly, like two epochs ago — the chef dropped out of Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel following the racist remarks about Mexican immigrants that Trump used to launch to his presidential campaign. Since then, he’s called out the the Trump administration for its response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, generally trolled and talked shit on Twitter, and and offered daily free meals to furloughed federal workers. While Andrés was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his disaster-relief work, the ceremonial pitch is unquestionably the greatest and most significant moment of the chef’s life.
