🔗 Share this article

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not merely a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were sent into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's sports clubs quickly issued messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management stated the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under considerable external demands, the organization later committed $1m in aid for individuals personally impacted by the operations but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a move that local writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that history and the values it represents by officials and current and past players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, include a share in a detention company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, 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 succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who share similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global players, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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