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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 nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a great sporting achievement, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain leaders. After significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in aid for families directly affected by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their 2024 championship win at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and past athletes. A number of team members including the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have given the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its roster of international stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn 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 cheered in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, goes further than just the team's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Players and Fan Connections

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {