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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying comeback feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously upended numerous negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports teams promptly released messages of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, even Latinos, are supporters of certain leaders. Under significant external demands, the team later committed $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no official criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their 2024 World Series victory at the White House – a move that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and current and past players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have given the team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the team's current owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

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