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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback feat after another before prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different 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 – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. Under significant external demands, the team later committed $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's boast in having been the first professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it embodies by officials and present and past players. Several players including the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have given the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its roster of global players, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, goes further than only the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {