🔗 Share this article

For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable sporting achievement, possibly the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the games 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 immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations began in the city in early June, and national guard units were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable external demands, the team later committed $1m in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a decision that local writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and former players. A number of team members including the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have given the squad the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of international players, including the Asian superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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