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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying comeback act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time upended numerous negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a great athletic achievement, possibly the key turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports teams promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant external demands, the team later pledged $1m in support for families directly impacted by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their 2024 championship win at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and current and former athletes. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a detention company that operates detention facilities. The group's executives has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its roster of global players, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in suits don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Context and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than just the organization's present owners. The agreement that brought the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic 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 organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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