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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended many harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a great sporting moment, possibly the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm 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 removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team later committed $one million in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by executives and current and former athletes. Several players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the following outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the team?" local columnist one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have given the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of global players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in suits don't get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

International Players and Community Bonds

Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {