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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not happen during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape feat after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great athletic moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 spots each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids began in the city in June, and military units were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under significant public pressure, the team subsequently pledged $1m in aid for individuals personally affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and past athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who have similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to back the players and its roster of global stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in suits don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, however, runs deeper than only the team's current proprietors. The deal 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 downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {