🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not happen during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time upended many harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a great athletic achievement, perhaps the key turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

After aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but issued no official criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their 2024 World Series victory at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the values it embodies by officials and present and former athletes. A number of team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a detention company that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the following explosion of team support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man protest must have given the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who have similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Community Impact

The issue, however, goes further than just the organization's current owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling 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 excessive, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {