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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not happen during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic escape feat after another before winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning sequence that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the team's direction after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs quickly issued statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. After considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and current and former players. Several players such as the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a detention company that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives 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 compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

International Players and Community Bonds

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {