LA Loves The Dodgers. They Need To Love Us Back
The team is taking steps in the right direction, but it needs to go further in opposing ICE and supporting the community.
The Dodgers are my team, and to see them play is a thing of beauty. This is likely the best American professional sports franchise since the Jordan era Chicago Bulls. To watch them is to observe greatness. The opening line up, Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, is a 21st Century Murderers’ Row. Shohei, the star, hero of Los Angeles and Japan, is hands down the greatest to ever take the field. An ace pitcher and dangerous slugger, comparisons to Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Simone Biles, and Usain Bolt are apt.
This is what is so great about them. They aren’t supermen but a collection of talented, hardworking, lucky men from San Juan, Havana, Fountain Valley, and Mizusawa. Looking at what they have achieved is inspirational. Seeing it done to perfection makes you want to chase those same heights, no matter what the endeavor.
The ignorant will call it bread and circuses, a distraction from the real work that needs to be done. I counter that it doesn’t distract from the work but aides it. How can one be a progressive and struggle for a better world without loving the community. That is after all a critical part of what sports are. All the pageantry, drama, agony, and exhilaration of the season unfolds before the great mass of supporters both in the stadium and across the broader fandom. The joy of victory is collective, the sense of unity around a shared passion revitalizing. Fun is not to be rejected. It’s vital. In times like these it can help, in the words of Albert Camus, “keep intact in oneself a freshness, a cool wellspring of joy, love the day that escapes injustice, and return to combat having won that light.”
This is what the Dodgers are to this city. This is LA’s team, and that is why their recent behavior is so disappointing.
This April the organization accepted an invitation from the Trump Administration to come to the White House and celebrate their World Series victory. The team should have turned it down. This is not a regular presidency. The Trump Administration was already engaging in suppression of political dissent, attempting to end birthright citizenship, and behaving more and more like a dictatorship. There is no honor to be had consorting with people like this. It only serves to normalize the regime, a shameful act of complicity. Ohtani, an all time talent, has besmirched his reputation. The pictures of him shaking hands at this event will haunt him for decades. Some of the players looked uncomfortable. None spoke up or refused the invite. Superstar Mookie Betts went after mumbling that he regretted turning down a White House invite in 2019 while with the Red Sox. They even presented Trump with a Jersey bearing his name. It was a reprehensible circus.
The following months have only seen the offense compounded. Singer Nezza, despite the team’s claims to the contrary, says she was excoriated and blacklisted by the organization for singing the National Anthem in Spanish. A man wearing a sarape in support of the immigrant community was initially denied entry into the stadium, only being allowed in if he took off the scarf. The most glaring sin is not what they have done, but what they have failed to do.
LA is currently being terrorized by masked ICE agents who have in every respect earned their moniker as the modern Gestapo. We have seen them and allied federal agents arrest our neighbors, rip apart families, liberally deploy impact munitions, and recklessly brandish firearms all under the cloud of a tyrannical military deployment. All of this is meant to punish and subjugate the city while pursuing the goal of ethnic cleansing. Los Angeles has answered and risen up in resistance. Many of the protesters can be seen wearing Dodger blue and the iconic LA symbol. While we face batons and rubber bullets in the streets our team commits the gravest crimes, they stay silent.
This is the team of Jackie Robinson. The Dodgers took a bold stand for justice by breaking the game’s color barrier. It is a team that is made up of many immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, The Dominican Republic, Japan, and Korea. They wear the dearly departed Fernando Valenzuela’s 34 on their arms in his honor. He was an immigrant, probably the greatest of all Mexican players. It is these legacies they betray with their unconscionable behavior. It is the darkest moments in their history they embrace.
The stadium itself is built in Chavez Ravine, once a thriving Latinx community. These homes were snatched from their owners when the city used multiple tactics to take the land promising to build public housing. They later reneged out of a deranged sense anti-Communism. The clearing out was mostly completed before the team moved to LA, but they ended up striking a voter approved deal to make The Ravine the new stadium’s home. The last few holdouts were violently evicted and their houses bulldozed. There has never been a proper reckoning with this. Even so, a huge portion of the fanbase is Latinx. An embrace especially prominent post-Valenzuela. It is this community they betray most, and the shameful history of The Ravine the lean into, when they stay quiet.
I am heartened to see the team starting to take steps in the right direction. Yesterday, attempts by apparent ICE agents, who DHS claim were actually CBP, to enter the parking lot were denied by the organization. The community came out in righteous protest, and the feds eventually left.
Key people are starting to speak out, including broadcaster Jaime Jarrin and Fernando Valenzuela’s daughter Maria. Kike Hernandez, an underrated player and more importantly a good man, posted the following to his Instagram.
“Maybe I wasn't born and raised here, but this city adopted me as if I was one of them. I am too sad and infuriated with everything that is going on in the country and in our city. Los Angeles and Dodger fans have opened their arms to me, supported me and shown me a lot of kindness and most of all a lot of LOVE! This is my second home,” he wrote. “I cannot tolerate watching our community continue to be violated, attacked, abused and separated. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and their human rights. I stand with you!!! #CiudadDeImigrantes.”
The team announced today they plan to donate a million dollars to help impacted immigrant families.
This is a good start, but it needs to go further. The Dodgers Organization needs to make it clear that ICE and any affiliated outfits are not welcome at the stadium or in the parking lots under any circumstances. They need to publicly apologize for going to the White House and demand Trump return the jersey. Any fan kicked out or harangued for holding anti-ICE signs or wearing anything in solidarity with immigrants likewise needs a public apology and compensation. Any clothing associated with fascism, xenophobia, and/or race hate, such as maga hats, should be banned from all Dodgers property. The org should release a statement unequivocally denouncing the terror unleashed by ICE and reiterating their expressed support for immigrants and their communities. They should also begin the process of consulting with the community and ensuring a just reckoning is had regarding the stadium’s construction.
To continue taking real, tangible action would be more than symbolic. The international players’ star power would help get the message out around the world. This would be the team embracing a community that has rallied around them. This would grant their symbol, so a part of the fabric of this city, the moral authority to deserve the pedestal on which it is placed. Now is one of the darkest times in the history of Los Angeles. We need our team worse than ever, not just on the field, but standing by us as we take to the streets. We need them to link arms with us in solidarity as so many suffer yet resist. We love our boys in blue, and now its time for them to properly love us back.