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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic escape act after another before prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously upended many negative misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to react to resulting protests, two of the city's sports clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the team later committed $1m in aid for families personally affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first professional franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the values it represents by executives and present and past players. Several team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the team?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Effect

The problem, however, goes further than only the organization's present owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

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