🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the values it represents by executives and current and past athletes. Several players such as the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, include a stake in a detention corporation that runs detention centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have given the team the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"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 avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to avoid the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Fan Connections

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