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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic comeback act after another before winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting achievement, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, 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 pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for her or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports clubs promptly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. After significant external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and current and past athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have given the squad the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Fan Connections

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {