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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another and then winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a great athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for much of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of current political figures. After considerable public pressure, the organization later pledged $1m in support for individuals directly impacted by the raids but made no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous championship win at the official residence – a decision that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … 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 invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and past athletes. Several team members including the manager had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have brought the squad the luck it needed to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Past Background and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the organization's present proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the events has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

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