The LA Dodgers Secure the World Series, However for Latino Fans, It's Complicated

In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

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

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After intensified enforcement operations began in the city in June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams quickly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the team later pledged $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but made no public criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Legacy

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 local columnists labeled as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional team to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former players. Several players such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its roster of global stars, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident 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 executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 album that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

International Players and Community Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {