🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a great athletic achievement, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

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

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

After intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. Under considerable external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but issued no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that local writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and present and former athletes. Several players including the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a private prison corporation that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have given the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of international players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, goes further than just the team's current owners. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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