🔗 Share this article

For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously upended many negative misconceptions 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 at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable external demands, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for families directly affected by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by executives and current and past athletes. Several team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Latino fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international players, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in suits don't get to take 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 only the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Community Connections

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