🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous harmful stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the key shift in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand spots per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

When intensified immigration raids started in the city in June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president stated the organization want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. Under considerable external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in support for families personally impacted by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's boast in having been the first professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and present and former athletes. A number of players including the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, include a share in a detention corporation that runs detention centers. The group's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought World Series triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local writer one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who have similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global players, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the team's current owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area above the city center and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They've acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {