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

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic escape act after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs quickly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of certain political figures. Under considerable external demands, the team later committed $1m in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but made no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a move that local writers described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and present and former athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a detention company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who have similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in suits don't get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic fans 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 team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Stars and Community Bonds

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