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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The play itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great sporting achievement, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids began in the city in June, and military units were sent into the area to react to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer teams quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and current and past athletes. A number of players including the manager had expressed reluctance to go to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current agendas.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the following outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one 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 blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have given the team the fortune it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its roster of international stars, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Historical Context and Community Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

International Stars and Community Connections

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {