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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another before winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a great sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the team's direction after looking for most of the games like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to react to resulting protests, two of the local sports teams promptly released messages of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the team later committed $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and current and past players. A number of team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal protest must have given the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Community Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, 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 exploiting its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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