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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape act after another before winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting achievement, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Complicated Connection with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids began in the city in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the city to react to resulting protests, two of the local sports teams quickly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management stated the organization want to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under significant public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $1m in support for individuals personally impacted by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that local columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and current and past players. Several players including the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but either changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a private prison company that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the squad the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its roster of global stars, including the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The issue, however, goes further than just the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s required the city razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {