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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting achievement, possibly the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, 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 is so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were sent into the city to respond to ensuing protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly issued statements of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for families directly impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it embodies by executives and current and past players. Several team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the organization's present proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 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 market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers 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 boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

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