🔗 Share this article

For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another before prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously upended numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals personally impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the official residence – a move that local columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the first professional team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and present and former players. A number of players such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own released financial documents, include a share in a private prison company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the team?" local writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its roster of global players, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"These men in suits don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Community Connections

Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {