The LA Dodgers Claim the World Series, However for Latino Fans, It's Complicated

For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team executed one death-defying escape act after another before prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the team's direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained 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 many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Complicated Connection with the Team

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released statements of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable portion of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable public pressure, the team later committed $one million in aid for families directly affected by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a move that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league team to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and current and former athletes. Several team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention company that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, 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 mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Past Background and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a hill above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events 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, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Community Bonds

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