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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a great sporting moment, possibly the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a team fan these days – for her or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military units were sent into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for individuals directly affected by the raids but made no public criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and past athletes. Several players such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has said many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing explosion of team pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {