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President Obama calls Joe Maddon to officially invite Cubs to White House

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President Barack Obama telephoned Cubs manager Joe Maddon on Thursday night to renew the invitation Obama tweeted out just after the Cubs’ historic championship: Come and visit the White House.

Obama, one of the world’s best-known White Sox fans, “expressed how proud he was of the team, and how much he enjoyed watching the Cubs break their 108-year curse,” a White House spokesman said.

It’s a time-limited offer: Obama at noon on Jan. 20 will no longer have the keys to the Executive Mansion.

Already he has welcomed the Stanley Cup-winning Blackhawks to his house three times after their championships in 2010, 2013 and 2015.

Fifty years after the fact, he took time in 2013 to meet at the White House with members of the 1963 Loyola University Chicago Ramblers championship team to mark the 50th anniversary of their Division I basketball title.

He may be commander in chief, but he’s had little control over which baseball team his aides from Chicago favored.

Former aide Mike Strautmanis, a Chicago native, said in a September interview that during his time working for the president, he, senior adviser David Axelrod and speechwriter Cody Keenan vied over who was the “biggest Cubs fan in the White House.”

“I think I was,” said Strautmanis, now with the Barack Obama Foundation in Chicago. “There were a lot of Chicago sports fans around.”

kskiba@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @KatherineSkiba