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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the city to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local sports teams promptly released messages of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to mark their 2024 championship win at the White House – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it represents by executives and current and past players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has said many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to certain agendas.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of global players, 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 victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he lost to eviction 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, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Community Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {