Commentary: After nearly dying in the last World Series, he’s happy to be rooting for the Dodgers again

There may be no Dodger fan more grateful than Conrado Contreras to see the blue team lose the first game of the World Series. Look, this 75-year-old man is having fun any A fall classic.

One year ago tomorrow, the Zacatecas native suffered a heart attack and mild stroke after watching his Dodgers win Game 2 of the World Series against the New York Yankees. He spent three days in a medically induced coma at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, and when he regained consciousness he heard excited nurses deliver the news that the Dodgers had won the championship.

This lifelong baseball fan had no idea what they were talking about. His passion for the sport faded along with his memory.

At the end of the year, as family members played highlights from the 2024 tournament while recovering at a clinic in Gardena, the former Carpenter would shrug and change the channel. When someone told him that legendary Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela had died, Contreras swore he had just seen his fellow Mexican at the stadium.

It wasn’t until the 2025 baseball season that Contreras’ mentality began to truly pick up. He attended games at Florence Graham’s unincorporated home and fell in love with the Dodgers all over again. But he didn’t cheer like before. Contreras followed his doctor’s orders to stay calm when the Dodgers lost, instead of cursing as he had in the past, and he would silently applaud when the team won, whereas before he would roar.

He is the father-in-law of my sister Alejandrina. I want to go to Game 1 of this year’s World Series with Don Conrado and experience the death of a fan.

Contreras was wearing a flat-brimmed fedora and a blue Dodgers 2024 World Series championship as he entered my sister’s Norwalk home on a walker with the help of Alejandrina’s husband, Conrad. His father speaks slower than before and can no longer drive, but Contreras is again the same man his family knew: witty, observant, obsessed with baseball.

a campus pitcher from his hometown escobedo mountainContreras joined the Dodgers almost as soon as he immigrated to the United States in 1970 to join his brothers in Highland Park. He used to attend games every week, “when $10 would get two people into the stadium and you could have a hot dog,” Contreras told me in Spanish before the first game.

His stories from those years are flawless. Don Sutton hit the buzzer beater. The Cincinnati Reds are always “ready to fight to the death.” When Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell hit a home run at Dodger Stadium in 1973, “we all just stared above our heads in awe.”

Contreras was an avid football fan who surprised their son with the anecdote in 1983 when he took his pregnant wife, Mary, to a Valenzuela game on the day Conrad was due because they were handing out “I (Heart) Fernando” T-shirts.

“What happened to the shirt?” Conrad asked his mother in Spanish.

“I threw it away,” Mary, 61, replied.

“Now they cost a lot of money!” he groaned.

“They’re cheap! The color fades really fast.”

Mary said the family continued to attend games during Conrad’s teenage years, but stopped “when even the birds couldn’t bear to watch.” Conrad, 42, thinks the last time he went to a game with his father was “at least” 20 years ago. But they often watch the games on TV. He was the man who saved his father’s life a year ago by performing CPR.

“He was walking around the house the whole game,” Conrad said.

“No, well, Roberto pissed me off,” Conrado responded, his nickname for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “But I can’t be angry anymore.”

I asked him how he thought this year’s series would go. He mentioned Shohei Otani, whom he kept calling nippon newspaper Use a respectful tone, because, well, his memory is probably hazy.

“He struck out too many, but when he hit, he hit. If he hit like that, they’d win the series. But if Toronto hits, forget about it.”

There’s one more question before the game, one that too many liberal Latino Dodgers fans are feeling in their stomachs right now: Is it ethical to cheer for the team, given that they haven’t spoken out loudly against Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and that owner Mark Walter has invested in companies that profit from it?

“Sports should not get into politics but all sports owners support Trompas,” he said, using a nickname I’d heard many ranch liberals give Trump. He shrugged.

“So what do we do? They’ve been la migra Leave the stadium,” referring to a failed attempt by federal agents to enter the stadium parking lot in June. “If the team allows that, then there’s a huge problem.

Mary was less sympathetic. “Latino shouldn’t let the Dodgers off easy. But when Latinos surrender, they surrender.”

It’s game time.

Conrad donned a gray Dodgers road jersey to match his black cap. My sister is an Angels follower for some reason and she wears a Kiké Hernández t-shirt “because he stands with immigrants.”

“The only good thing about the Dodgers is they don’t win games with gringos,” says Mary, who actually doesn’t care much about baseball because she finds it boring. “This is a person [Ohtani] Whoever doesn’t want to speak English wins for them. “

Her husband smiled.

“Let’s see if Mary plays baseball.”

“This will be real Miracle,” she snapped.

When the Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the top of the third, Contreras rubbed his hands in glee, and when the Blue Jays tied the game in the bottom of the fourth and we were enjoying Taco Nazzo’s takeaway, Contreras just frowned. “His anger came in waves, and it was a journey,” Conrad said. “He’s calmer, but Senoha.“

“WHO?” Conrado was expressionless.

When Dodgers starting pitcher Blake Snell left the game with the bases loaded and no outs in the bottom of the sixth inning, Contreras shook his head in disgust but kept his tone calm.

“It pisses me off. They should have taken him away a long time ago, but Roberto didn’t. That’s what I’m afraid of. When Toronto moves forward, they move forward. They won’t stop until they destroy.”

Sure enough, the Blue Jays exploded for nine runs in that inning, including a two-run blast from catcher Alejandro Kirk, who had sparked the Blue Jays’ initial rally a few innings earlier.

Earlier in the game, Alejandrina told Conrado that Kirk was from Tijuana. Despite the generational gap, pride in their shared roots softened a bit of the sting of his home run, which made the score a humiliating 11-2.

“Thank God he’s Mexican,” Conrado told his son, patting his knee. “This is what we’re left with” to be happy about the game.

After one inning, Contreras began to feel dizzy. His blood sugar levels rose. Mary took off her jacket to fix his insulin device. My sister’s corgi, Penny, jumped up on the couch and lay in his lap.

“They do know someone is sick, right?” He said it to no one, then scratched Petunia’s belly and cooed, “You know I’m sick, right? I’m sick!”

When the “massacre” finally ended, Contreras remained philosophical.

“It’s incredible that I get to see that. But I still Marlowe. My feet hurt, my memory wasn’t what it used to be, and my balance wasn’t there anymore. But then there are the Dodgers. But they need to win. “

Conrad went into the bedroom to get his father’s walker.

“You want a Toronto jersey now?” he joked.

His father stared silently. “No, that would give me another heart attack.”