🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another before winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great sporting achievement, possibly the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were sent into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team subsequently pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the official residence – a decision that sports columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and present and former players. Several team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a detention corporation that operates enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current agendas.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Management

Many fans who share Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to back the team and its lineup of global stars, including the Asian superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, goes further than just the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests 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 matter, {