🔗 Share this article

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

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the team's favor after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely simple 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 half of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After intensified enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were deployed into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable portion of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of certain political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals personally impacted by the raids but issued no official criticism of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league franchise to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former athletes. A number of team members including the coach had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a detention company that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has said many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the following outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many fans who have Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international players, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire don't get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the house he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting 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 get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the team over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Community Bonds

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