The LA Dodgers Secure the Championship, Yet for Hispanic Fans, It's Complex

In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a great sporting achievement, possibly the key shift in the series in the team's favor after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

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

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of support with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of current leaders. After considerable external demands, the team later committed $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that local columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and past athletes. Several players such as the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own released financial documents, include a stake in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area columnist one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of international players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more evident 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 top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a easy task, {