Los Angeles Dodgers Secure the Championship, Yet for Latino Supporters, It's Not So Simple

For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously challenged numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. Under significant external demands, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the official residence – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and former players. 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 Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many fans who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the organization's present owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {