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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures 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 contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids began in the city in early June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the local soccer clubs promptly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team later committed $one million in support for families personally affected by the raids but made no official criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous championship win at the official residence – a move that local writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride 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 embodies by officials and present and past players. Several players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, include a share in a private prison corporation that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the following outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the team?" local columnist one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have given the team the fortune it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of global stars, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {