Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC
Yeah, that’s right.
American snapshot: Opening Day
L.A. Dodgers
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A Dodger fan on ‘the atmosphere’ at the stadium, thugs, and the Bryan Stow attack
Photo by MPR529/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Dodger Stadium during a game, May 2006
An insightful comment came in this afternoon in response to the racial tension that’s surrounded the attack on opening day at Dodger Stadium of Bryan Stow, a San Francisco Giants fan from Santa Cruz. There has been a racial undercurrent to the story since it was reported that the two suspects who violently beat Stow, who is white, were described as Latino.
Soon afterward, anti-Latino comments began appearing beneath the news reports online. This phenomenon has spread, bubbling into the mainstream via the talk-radio circuit. I wrote about this occurring in a post last Friday, which in turn generated more anti-Latino reaction. There was one comment on the site that I had to delete, which I wrote about earlier today.
In response to today’s post, a reader named Jose posted the comment below, which I’m reprinting in its entirety, with slight copyedits. While I haven’t closely followed the saga of of the team’s owners, which he writes about also, he makes interesting observations about the climate at the stadium and more:
As a Mexican-American and having grown up both a Dodger fan (dating back to 1974) and as having been raised in Northeast Los Angeles, I cannot say that the attack surprised me.
Slowly, but steadily I have witnessed the product deteriorate in terms of not only the team, but its management, and the atmosphere surrounding Dodger Stadium itself.
I am not here to give whites or any other racial or ethnic group a a free run at generalizing us, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and Latinos in general, in terms of us being supposedly nothing but misfits and degenerates. However, the sad truth is yes, the Dodger management has allowed a certain gangster/thug element to run roughshod over the Pavilion sections as well as the parking lot. And it happens to be mainly made up of Latino gangsters and thugs.
And this is due to the bottom line of the McCourts, which is the heck with family entertainment, a good and competitive team year in and year out as well as a safe and enjoyable atmosphere before, during and after the game.
The problem has existed for a long time (what was it, Rupert Murdoch, who owned the team before the McCourts?), but has been exacerbated by the neglect to the Dodger institution by the McCourts in favor of their leveraged mansions in Malibu.
Lastly, this problem is seen in thugs of all shades and sizes and will continue to fester until someone is killed by one of these thugs and attendance/revenues fall or better yet, a new ownership comes to the Dodgers and has Chavez Ravine in focus instead of Malibu and Beverly Hills.
Blame and punish these gangster thugs with the justice system and by MLB removing the McCourts from Dodger Stadium, in that way family and class will be restored to the Dodger name and headlines…but do not vent hatred and your secret racism by attacking the Latino population of Los Angeles County, which supports in mass the Dodgers with their hard (earned) money spent on a ballgame, just like all other loyal Dodger fans.
The Dodgers held a drive-through fundraiser today for Stow, a paramedic and father who remains in a medically-induced coma and has shown signs of having sustained brain damage in the beating. No arrests have been made yet, in spite of a reward offer.
Race and the Dodger Stadium attack
Photo by FoxKat/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Baseball fans at Dodger Stadium, August 2005
A couple of days ago I came across an essay that got at the heart of the uncomfortable racial undercurrent running through the discussion of last week’s senseless beating of a San Francisco Giants fan by two men at Dodger Stadium on opening night.
The victim, Bryan Stow, a Santa Cruz paramedic and father who was beaten so severely he may have brain damage, is white. The attackers, who have yet to be caught, are described as Latino. Writing for the L.A. Forward website, Tomás J. Benítez, a longtime Dodger fan and advisor to the Latino Baseball History Project of the Baseball Reliquary, took on the race issue:
Whether this was a racially motivated crime is yet to be determined, but it is possible, given that bigotry is often a characteristic of thugs—who come in all colors.
Race is a factor for all the wrong reasons. When news of the incident broke I was chagrined. It just had to be stupid Mexicans, I said to myself. A local writer made reference to Raider fans—a barely veiled, racially charged comment that infers rowdy fans from lower classes who are part of the thug culture, often Black and Brown. He was very bold to call it as he sees it, he just didn’t say what he really meant. In either case, we are both wrong. What happened was indeed one isolated incident, poorly monitored by park security, infused by booze and stupidity, and a desecration of sports to any fan—regardless of color, religion, gender or lifestyle.
Can Laker morado be as big as ‘Doyer’ azul?
Photo by Juan Barredo/Flickr (Creative Commons)
A Lakers fan and his flags, June 2010
Los Angeles is a town full of Latino Dodger fans, but a Los Angeles Times story from earlier this week got at yet another one of Latino L.A.’s sports obsessions, the Lakers, whose purple and gold flags fly from car antennas in noticeable abundance on the Eastside this time of year.
The story detailed a big score by the Lakers organization in the National Basketball Association’s push to cash in on the “fast-growing Latino market.” In short, the Lakers recently announced a 20-year agreement with Time Warner Cable to create a Spanish-language regional sports network with the Lakers as its centerpiece, beginning next season. It will be the first of its kind in the country.
A couple of Lakers fanaticos were featured in the piece, including this one:
Consider longtime hoops fan Billy Sanchez, a third-generation Mexican-American. When he got his first driver’s license, he knew exactly where to celebrate: at a Lakers game.
“All I wanted to do was just go down to the Forum, find a scalper and buy tickets,” he recalls. “And I did that quite often.”
Two decades and five NBA titles later, the team has left the Forum for Staples Center and Sanchez, 35, has no need for scalpers because he works in sales for his father’s beer distributorship in the City of Industry and they have a luxury suite.
But his passion for the Lakers hasn’t faded. “I’ve been a fan ever since I can remember,” he says. “I watch every single game.”
The L.A. Dodgers organization also markets aggressively to Latinos. Last summer it trademarked “Los Doyers,” a nickname so common it’s mispronounced on purpose. The Dodgers organization had been selling team paraphernalia with the “Los Doyers” logo, including t-shirts and hats. So had private businesses, which soon afterward were asked to stop selling it.
