🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another before winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the team's favor after appearing for much of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and occupy as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were sent into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. After significant public pressure, the organization later committed $one million in support for families directly impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that sports writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and present and former athletes. A number of players such as the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have given the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Management

Numerous fans who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international stars, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn 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.

"These men in formal attire do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Community Bonds

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