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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying comeback feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time challenged numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting achievement, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and military units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local soccer teams quickly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable public pressure, the team later pledged $one million in aid for families personally affected by the raids but issued no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their 2024 World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports writers labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and current and past athletes. Several players such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has said many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the following explosion of team pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who have similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international players, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, however, goes further than only the organization's present owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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