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For 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 on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a great athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in support for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league franchise to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and current and past athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a private prison company that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's executives has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of global players, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the team's present proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"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 wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening curfew.

International Players and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {