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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time challenged many harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as 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 contrast 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 entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and military units were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of current political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the team later pledged $1m in support for families personally affected by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. Several players including the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention facilities. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its roster of international players, featuring the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Context and Community Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area above the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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