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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, 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 easy to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly released messages of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable external demands, the organization later committed $one million in support for families directly affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their 2024 championship win at the official residence – a move that local columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by officials and present and past athletes. A number of team members including the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a detention company that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many fans who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Community Connections

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {