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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying escape act after another and then winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, possibly the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so easy to be demoralized right now."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were deployed into the city to react to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly issued statements of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team subsequently pledged $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it embodies by officials and present and former athletes. A number of players such as the coach had voiced reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. The group's executives has stated many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following explosion of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" area columnist one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many supporters who have similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its roster of international players, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 album that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Community Bonds

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {