🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying escape act after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, possibly the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the local sports teams promptly issued messages of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the organization want to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. After considerable public pressure, the organization later committed $1m in support for families personally affected by the operations but issued no public criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their 2024 World Series win at the White House – a move that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and present and former players. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area writer one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, goes further than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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