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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended numerous harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After significant external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in support for families personally impacted by the raids but made no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and past players. Several team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Community Effect

The issue, though, goes further than just the organization's present owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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