🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a great sporting achievement, possibly the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military units were deployed into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization want to steer clear of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After significant public pressure, the team later committed $one million in aid for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship win at the official residence – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and present and past players. A number of players including the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has stated many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The issue, however, goes further than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship 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 years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {