🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously upended many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released messages of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the team later committed $one million in support for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no official criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former players. Several team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that operates enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous fans who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Historical Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further than only the organization's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They've put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions 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 nightly restriction.

International Stars and Community Connections

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