Los Angeles Dodgers Secure the Championship, However for Latino Supporters, It's Complicated
In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape act after another before winning in extra innings over the opposing team.
It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.
The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.
This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the team's direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.
"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."
"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."
Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.
The Complicated Connection with the Team
When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military units were sent into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams quickly released messages of solidarity with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.
Management has said the organization want to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the operations but issued no public criticism of the administration.
White House Event and Historical Legacy
Months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by executives and current and past players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.
Business Control and Fan Conflicts
An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that operates enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.
These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.
"Can one to support the team?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to win.
Separating the Players from the Management
Many fans who share Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president 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 for more time than they have."
Historical Background and Community Effect
The problem, however, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the events has an low-income worker at the stadium revealing that the home he forfeited to eviction is now third base.
Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging 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 warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.
International Players and Fan Connections
Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {
