The LA Dodgers Win the Championship, But for Hispanic Supporters, It's Complex
For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.
It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.
The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.
This wasn't just a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.
"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."
"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news β enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."
Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays β for her or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.
A Complicated Relationship with the Organization
After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families β but not the baseball team.
The team president stated the organization want to stay away of politics β a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. After considerable public pressure, the team subsequently committed $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no public condemnation of the government.
White House Visit and Historical Heritage
Months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to mark their 2024 championship win at the White House β a move that sports writers labeled as "pathetic β¦ spineless β¦ and contradictory", considering the team's boast in having been the first professional team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the values it represents by officials and present and former athletes. Several team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.
Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas
A further complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction β and the financial stake β are their own type of compliance to current policies.
These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular β feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.
"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.
Separating the Players from the Management
Many supporters who have similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of global players, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.
"These men in suits don't get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."
Past Context and Neighborhood Impact
The problem, however, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.
Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.
"They've put one arm around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.
International Stars and Fan Connections
Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {
