🔗 Share this article

For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

However, it's exactly simple to be a team fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations began in the city in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports clubs quickly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by executives and present and past athletes. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement facilities. The group's executives has stated many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. 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 manager and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {