🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not occur during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying comeback feat after another and then winning in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a great athletic achievement, perhaps the key shift in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for much of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

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

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly issued messages of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. After significant public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in aid for families personally affected by the raids but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship win at the White House – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and current and former players. Several team members such as the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison company that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the following outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further 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 low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"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," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Community Connections

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {