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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time upended numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the key shift in momentum in the team's direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

When intensified enforcement operations began in the city in June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the organization later committed $1m in aid for families directly affected by the raids but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a decision that sports columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the first professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and past players. A number of team members such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs detention centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected 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 cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the luck it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Impact

The issue, however, goes further than just the team's current owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"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 warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

International Players and Community Connections

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {