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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic escape act after another before prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time challenged numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so simple to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Organization

After aggressive enforcement operations began in the city in June, and military units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. After considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that local columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and former players. Several players including the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but either changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its roster of global stars, featuring the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"These men in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, goes further than just the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the events has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Community Connections

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