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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously upended numerous negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great sporting achievement, perhaps the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely simple to be a team fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids began in the city in June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer teams promptly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of current political figures. After significant external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in support for families directly affected by the operations but made no official condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the first major league team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that history and the values it represents by officials and present and past athletes. Several players including the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of international stars, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the organization's present owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction 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 house he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

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