🔗 Share this article

For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying escape feat after another before winning in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so simple to be disheartened these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly released messages of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable external demands, the team later committed $1m in support for individuals directly impacted by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the values it embodies by executives and current and past players. Several team members such as the coach had voiced unwillingness 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 complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the following outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

"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 Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's present owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the events has an low-income worker at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly 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 calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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