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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time upended numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for most of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Organization

After intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were sent into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer teams promptly issued messages of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team subsequently committed $1m in support for individuals directly impacted by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following explosion of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global stars, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, however, goes further than just the team's present owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

International Players and Community Connections

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a simple task, {