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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic escape act after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously challenged many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals personally impacted by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that sports columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first professional team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and present and former athletes. A number of players such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who have similar misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

"These men in suits don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The problem, however, goes further than only the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted 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 calls to boycott the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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