🔗 Share this article

For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying comeback feat after another and then winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously upended numerous harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The play itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so simple to be disheartened these days."

However, it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer teams promptly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of certain political figures. Under significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the raids but issued no public criticism of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a move that local columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and current and past players. Several team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

These factors add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, goes further than just the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

Global Stars and Community Connections

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {