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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic comeback feat after another and then winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the series like the weaker team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current leaders. After considerable external demands, the team subsequently pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the operations but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that history and the values it represents by officials and present and past athletes. Several team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention company that runs enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many fans who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Community Connections

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {