In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic escape feat after another before winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.
It came a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past years.
The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.
This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.
"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."
"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."
Not that it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats each time.
When aggressive immigration raids began in the city in June, and military units were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.
The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. Under considerable external demands, the team later pledged $1m in support for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the government.
Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it embodies by officials and current and past players. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.
An additional complication for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.
These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.
"Is it okay to support the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay ruminating 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 felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the squad the fortune it required to succeed.
Numerous fans who share similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international stars, 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 the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered 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."
The problem, however, goes further than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.
A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.
"They've put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.
Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {
