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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback feat after another and then winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, 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 disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After intensified enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer teams quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in support for individuals directly impacted by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Three months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and past athletes. Several team members including the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship victory and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Context and Community Impact

The issue, though, goes further than just the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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