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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a great sporting moment, possibly the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly released statements of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. After considerable public pressure, the team later pledged $1m in support for families personally impacted by the raids but made no official condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports writers labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and past athletes. Several team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional 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, include a stake in a private prison corporation that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't ultimately 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 team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous fans who share Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Context and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, however, goes further than just the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an low-income worker at the venue revealing that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

International Players and Community Connections

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