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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that simultaneously upended numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the city to react to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the values it embodies by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Latino columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a simple task, {