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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple dramatic escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

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

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the key shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

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

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs promptly issued messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain leaders. After significant public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no official criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and past athletes. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs detention facilities. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Community Effect

The problem, though, goes further than just the organization's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans 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 avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {