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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended many harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the key shift in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids began in the city in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs promptly released statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After significant external demands, the organization later committed $1m in support for families personally impacted by the operations but made no official condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Months before, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their 2024 championship win at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the values it embodies by officials and current and former players. Several players including the manager had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following explosion of team pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its roster of global players, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further than just the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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