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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic escape feat after another before winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, possibly the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so easy to be demoralized right now."

However, it's exactly simple to be a team fan these days – for her or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports teams quickly issued statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals personally affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the government.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a decision that sports columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and current and former athletes. Several team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released financial documents, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who have similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its roster of international stars, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, however, goes further than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {