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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in early June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly released messages of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of politics – a view influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant public pressure, the team subsequently committed $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and present and former athletes. A number of team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He 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 protest must have given the squad the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international stars, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The issue, however, goes further than only the team's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Latino columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters 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 noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {