🔗 Share this article

For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously challenged many harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs quickly released messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable public pressure, the organization later committed $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional franchise to break 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 past players. Several players including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have brought the team the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many fans who share similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its roster of international players, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, goes further than only the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Community Connections

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