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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying escape act after another before winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's sports teams promptly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

Management has said the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under considerable external demands, the team later pledged $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it embodies by officials and present and former players. Several team members such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a detention company that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have given the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Community Impact

The problem, though, goes further than just the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that documents the story has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic fans while profiting from them 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 raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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