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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic comeback act after another before winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened these days."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

After intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in support for families directly affected by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a decision that local columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it represents by officials and present and past players. Several team members such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area writer one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in formal attire do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging 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 avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Connections

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