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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in overtime over the opposing team.

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

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

After intensified enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly issued messages of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $one million in support for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no official criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and former players. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but either changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further complication for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the team?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who share similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global players, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business 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 coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits don't get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The problem, though, goes further than only the team's present proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Community Bonds

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {