The LA Dodgers Secure the World Series, But for Hispanic Fans, It's Not So Simple

For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

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

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so easy to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable public pressure, the team later committed $one million in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the first major league team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and current and past players. Several team members including the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison company that operates detention centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have given the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global players, including the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in suits don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Community Connections

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