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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, perhaps the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were deployed into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly issued statements of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under considerable external demands, the organization subsequently committed $1m in support for families personally affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to celebrate their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the principles it represents by executives and current and past players. Several team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that runs detention centers. The group's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many supporters who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Community Effect

The problem, however, goes further than only the organization's current owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

International Players and Fan Bonds

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