🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying comeback feat after another and then winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time challenged numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

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

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were sent into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly issued messages of support with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for families directly affected by the operations but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it represents by executives and present and former players. A number of team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention company that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the following explosion of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many supporters who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to back the players and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the city razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {