I'm Used to the Dodgers Breaking My Heart, Not So Much Betraying American Democracy
I'm just glad Vin Scully died before I saw him chumming it up with Donald.
On October 15th, 1988, Kirk Gibson hobbled up to the plate with the Dodgers down by a run. Gibby had been missing all game long, and wasn’t expected to even see a single at-bat during the series against the Oakland A’s. But after Mike Davis earned a walk from Dennis Eckersley, one of the nastiest closers I’ve ever seen in the role, the stage was set.
Though he looked somehow now a billion years old and in enormous pain with the first couple of swings, what happened when The Eck left one out over the plate that was too good for Kirk to let go was a moment permanently etched into deepest wrinkles in my brain.
One of the greatest moments in Dodgers history happened on my 8th birthday. What other choice did I have than to fall head over heels in love with the team that delivered one of the most magical moments in baseball history…on my actual birthday? After all, I could only presume that from that point forward, the team would win a minimum of a World Series every couple of years, and it would be a lifetime of triumphant memories associated with being a fan…
…and then the reality of being a Dodger fan set in over the next twenty-five or thirty years. There were the disastrous Fox Sports years, where the team was purchased to be used as a marketing tool of that burgeoning sports network. Then as if being owned a faceless, profit-driven monolith wasn’t bad enough, Frank and Jamie McCourt stepped in to buy the team, and used is as a slush fund to destroy the team but enrich themselves with.
When a group of people including L.A. sports icon Magic Johnson — whom I’ve also loved since I was a small boy — stepped in and bought the team from the McCourt’s, the ownership nightmare ended. Though, it’s not just the ownership of the team that has caused heartbreak over the years.
If you’re a fan of the Dodgers, whether from their time in Brooklyn, or in Los Angeles, you know the phrase, “Wait ‘til next year” quite intimately.
The Dodgers have been extremely good their entire existence at ripping their fans’ hearts out and stomping on them. On paper, they could be the most amazing team, win 95 games, and then flame out in the first round of the playoffs. You get to used to it as a fan, and you keep coming back, because there’s just something about The Boys in Blue.
The sting that the team inflicted on me this week is something new altogether.
The Dodgers’ fanbase happens to be one of the most LatinX centered fanbases in all of sports. So much so that they’ve been lovingly dubbed “Los Doyers” by the fans, and have even sold merch with that Spanglish-ized nickname on it. The Dodgers have, historically, been the team at the forefront of “woke”policies like breaking the color barrier, recruiting and signing players from every continent imaginable, and putting women in the front office.
When they accepted the Donald Trump Regime’s invitation to celebrate their World Series win last year with him at the White House, it was beyond any doubt the most flagrant way they’ve ever told me to go fuck myself, and again, over the years they’ve become absolute experts at it. Watching players on the team that has stood for the dismantling of white supremacy for the better part of 80 years chuckling and paling around with the most blatantly white supremacist administration in a handful of generations was…devastating.
I was sure they wouldn’t insult their fans by chumming it up with the guy who wants to deport a large portion of that fanbase. I was wrong. Very wrong. I thought maybe someone, anyone, on the team would take a stand and say something, or even wear something, in protest of this administration. I was even more wrong about that.
These aren’t normal times. Trump isn’t a normal president. So citing traditions and norms isn’t a good enough reason to prop-up and normalize a fascist regime, if you ask me. Hell, the Dodgers just took a meeting with the anti-DEI president and if you don’t call putting a black man on your active roster during a time of segregation a “woke DEI hire,” you’re probably dumb enough to put a lying traitor conman back in office after he attempted a failed coup.
So…what am I going to do about it? What I can.
I won’t wear another Dodger jersey, hat, or t-shirt until they atone for this. I won’t watch another one of their games. I won’t root for them to win. In fact, they haven’t won a game since they visited the White House, and I’m content with the team I’ve loved since I watched Kirk Gibson smash that ball over the right field pavilion fence at Dodger Stadium never winning another game until they course correct from Nazi sympathizing.
I guess, really, I’m just glad that dear Vin Scully died before he could break my heart by visiting the White House with the team.
