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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that simultaneously upended numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after appearing for most of the games like the weaker side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're 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 is so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a view colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $1m in aid for families directly affected by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local columnists labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. A number of players including the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, include a share in a private prison company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many supporters who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its roster of international stars, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's present owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an low-income worker at the stadium revealing that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They've acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Community Bonds

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