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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple dramatic escape act after another before winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that simultaneously upended numerous negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for much of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

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

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan these days – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to resulting protests, two of the local sports teams quickly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. After considerable public pressure, the team subsequently committed $one million in aid for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that local columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by officials and present and former athletes. Several team members such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention corporation that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

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

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the squad the luck it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share similar misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, goes further than only the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles 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, possibly southern California most influential Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Community Connections

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a simple task, {