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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed one death-defying escape feat after another before winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations started in the city in early June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly issued messages of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable external demands, the organization later committed $one million in aid for individuals personally affected by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a move that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and present and former athletes. Several players including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a private prison corporation that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many supporters who share similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. 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 manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Community Connections

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