How Baseball Gave L.A. a Much-Needed Win; Good News on SNAP Benefits–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Nov. 3, 2025

Indy Digest: Nov. 3, 2025

On Oct. 24—the day of the first game of the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays—Los Angeles Times staff writer James Rainey penned the newspaper’s “Essential California” newsletter, which was headlined “After a year of challenge, L.A. needs a Dodgers title.”

Rainey wrote:

L.A. feels ready for this moment. Ready for its Dodgers. Ready for Mookie and Freddie and Yoshi and Teoscar and, of course, ready for The Show, Shohei Ohtani, the humble giant who already has cemented himself as one of the city’s all-time All-Timers. …

But the occasion feels even bigger because of what the city has endured in 2025. It started with the fires that destroyed thousands of homes, continued with brash federal immigration raids and the unrest in the street that followed and has stumbled along with a government shutdown that pushed others from their jobs.

“Even upbeat, casual exchanges are important,” said die-hard Dodgers fan and LAist radio host Larry Mantle, “as we deal with the results of terrible fires, immigration raids and the federal shutdown.”

A victory won’t rebuild all the homes lost from Malibu to Pacific Palisades to Altadena. It won’t end the state’s seemingly endless confrontations with President Trump. But it will give a reason to forget the upsetting hurly-burly of the news and come together. “It’s like our little bubbles start to melt away,” said film editor E.J. Barrois, “because we have something that we can all agree on.”

Regular readers here know that I am a devout Los Angeles Dodgers fan, something that started four decades ago with a Jackie Robinson biography and a random sheet of Topps baseball cards inserted into a magazine I got at school. For most of this time, my fandom has had nothing to do with the team’s location in Los Angeles. It was the history of the team, not the location, that hooked me.

But that started to change when I moved to California almost 13 years ago. As I’ve had the opportunity to semi-regularly spend time in Los Angeles in recent years, I’ve become a fan of the city—not just their baseball team.

Then came January, and the Los Angeles wildfires. Seeing the utter devastation was horrifying. As James Rainey wrote, that was just the start of what’s been a shitty year for Los Angeles.

When the Dodgers lost Games 4 and 5 of the World Series at home—sending the series back to Toronto with the Dodgers down three games to two—it looked like L.A. would be denied a second consecutive Dodgers championship. The Dodgers won Game 6, but on Saturday night, they were losing the winner-take-all Game 7. In the top of the ninth, with the Blue Jays leading 4-3, the Dodgers had nobody on base with one out. I’d resigned myself to a loss.

Then backup infielder Miguel Rojas, on 3-2 pitch, got his first hit in a month—a home run over the left-field fence. The game was tied. There was hope.

The Dodgers would go on to somehow win the game two innings later, in what may have been the best World Series game of all time.

The Dodgers flew back to California yesterday, just in time for a massive parade in downtown L.A. this morning. Here’s a snippet from the Times’ coverage:

The 2025 Dodgers team has been a bright spot during an otherwise tumultuous year for the region, after wind-driven firestorms devastated thousands of homes in January and then widespread immigration sweeps began over the summer by the Trump administration, specifically targeting Los Angeles.

Carlos Soto, a San Bernardino resident, said the parade was a much-needed respite after the challenging year.

“I definitely feel the city needs a lift,” Soto said. “It is something that brings the community together across nationalities and political lines and unites everybody — it’s something that’s very needed.”

Chuck Berez, a decades-long Dodgers fan from L.A., was walking toward the parade route Monday morning and said the love from the organization and its fans embodied the city itself.

“They stick together. … You got to weather the storm and look at the big picture,” Berez said. “The way they came through in the clutch, you know, just showing you their resilience and their experience.”

While I watched the parade on TV this morning, as a fan of the Dodgers, I was elated. While I watched the utter jubilation of hundreds of thousands of Los Angelenos, as a fan of L.A., I was in tears.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• After being forced by the courts, the Trump administration has begrudgingly agreed to pay half of November’s benefits to SNAP recipients. The Washington Post says: “SNAP regularly costs the federal government about $9 billion a month. But the federal shutdown, which has lasted more than a month, has affected the program because Congress has not appropriated new funds for it. The available money in the contingency funding will pay for only about half of November’s benefits. In the Monday brief, Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at USDA, said that the Food and Nutrition Service, which administers SNAP, will spend about $450 million of the contingency funds paying for states to administer the program this month. An additional $150 million will be used for food assistance programs in Puerto Rico and American Samoa, and the remaining $4.65 billion in the fund will be used to pay for SNAP benefits. That money, Penn said, will cover 50 percent of each eligible household’s current allotments.”

• Meanwhile, the federal government shutdown is taking an increasing toll on travelers. The Los Angeles Times, via SFGate, says: “Two of Southern California’s busiest airports were experiencing average flight delays of at least an hour Sunday amid air traffic control staffing shortages due to the federal government shutdown. The advisories from the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center said the delays were expected to persist through Sunday night. The issue was related to ‘staffing,’ the advisories said. For San Diego, the advisory specified an issue with ‘tower staffing.’ … The only other airport nationwide with a ground delay advisory was in New Jersey, where the situation was even worse. Departures to Newark Liberty International Airport were delayed by an average of more than 3 1/2 hours, an advisory said. From 7 to 8 p.m. Eastern time, average delays of 4 1/2 hours were expected. Since the federal government shut down on Oct. 1, the FAA has warned of disruption at airports due to staff shortages.”

• Tomorrow is Election Day, and our partners at Calmatters say the prospects for Prop 50 are looking pretty good: “A day before voting ends for Proposition 50, California voters appear poised to approve Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts in Democrats’ favor. Recent opinion polls show strong support for the Yes side. Newsom’s campaign is flooding the airwaves with star-studded advertisements and drowning out its opponents’ faint final pitch to voters. And the governor has even asked supporters to back off on donations, as the influx of contributions was crashing the state’s campaign finance website. ‘You can stop donating now. Thank you,’ proclaimed the subject line of an email from Newsom’s campaign to supporters last week. We have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50.’ If approved, the measure would temporarily suspend California’s current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent citizens commission, and replace them through 2030 with districts drawn by Democratic insiders.”

• Trump sent National Guard troops and law-enforcement officers to Memphis, Tenn., as part of a “Memphis Safe Task Force.” How’s that gone? ProPublica reports: “In addition to targeting violent criminals, the operation … has ensnared innocent residents of this majority-Black city. Among those who have reported being harassed: a ride-share driver stopped for not wearing a seat belt despite having one on as she drove a passenger to the airport; a pastor pulled over for looking lost as she left a church gathering; and, in a case of mistaken identity, a 72-year-old man roused from bed and marched out of his apartment while clad in only his robe and underwear. None of these people were ultimately ticketed or arrested. But they told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism and ProPublica that they feared for their safety during what they described as indiscriminate and intimidating police encounters. While none of the law enforcement agencies involved responded to specific questions about these residents’ experiences, the news organizations corroborated their accounts using contemporaneous text messages and social media posts, as well as interviews with neighbors and relatives.”

• Jury selection is complete in a misdemeanor trial of a man being prosecuted for throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent in Washington, D.C. Here’s a NBC News story about the case, which includes one of the funniest lines I’ve read in a long time: “Prosecutors hit (Sean) Dunn with a misdemeanor assault charge in August. That came a day after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office failed to persuade a grand jury to indict Dunn on felony charges—a sub-optimal result for prosecutors. Dunn pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charge in September. The case is proceeding after a judge rejected the government’s motion to delay the trial because of a disagreement over jury instructions. … Dunn’s lawyers have claimed the case is ‘selective and vindictive prosecution,’ arguing he was singled out for prosecution “not because of the nature of his alleged conduct—throwing a soft object that caused no injury—but because his outspoken, viral critique of the current administration’s policing and immigration policies made him a political target. Federal prosecutors opposed Dunn’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the charge, writing that Dunn was ‘recorded throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range.’” THROWING A SANDWICH AT A FEDERAL OFFICER AT POINT BLANK RANGE!

• Today’s recall news involves … powder supplements from Sam’s Club! CBS News says: “Member’s Mark Super Greens Powder Supplements, which were sold at the discount chain’s stores nationwide and online, have been pulled from store shelves because they contain moringa leaf powder that may be contaminated with Salmonella bacteria, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an alert posted on its website. ‘If you have any of the products listed below in your home, throw them out or return them to the store,’ the agency said, while noting that the product has not been recalled. Three of the people who contracted Salmonella were hospitalized, according to the agency. Illnesses, which were reported between May and September, were confirmed in Florida, Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina and Virginia.”

• And finally … don’t you HATE it when you get the wrong package by mistake? NBC News reports: “A Kentucky woman, expecting medicine and other medical supplies in the mail, instead received a box of human body parts, authorities said Friday. A package that was meant for ‘surgical training’ went to the wrong address in Hopkinsville on Wednesday—in southwest Kentucky, about 75 miles outside of Nashville, Tennessee, officials said. ‘Yes, true story. She was expecting medical supplies and found arms and fingers in the box,’ Christian County Coroner Scott Daniel said in a statement to NBC News. ‘The box was intended to be delivered for surgical training but was somehow delivered to her front porch.’“

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