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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for much of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports teams promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the team later pledged $one million in support for families personally impacted by the operations but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and present and past players. A number of team members including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison company that runs detention centers. The group's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of global players, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. 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 players but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, goes further than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Community Bonds

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