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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple dramatic comeback feat after another and then winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged numerous negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting moment, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're yelling, 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's so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When intensified enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to react to resulting protests, two of the city's sports teams quickly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. After significant external demands, the organization later pledged $1m in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that local columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and current and past players. A number of players including the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a private prison corporation that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have given the team the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Impact

The issue, however, goes further than just the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They've 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 wrote over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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