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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment 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 prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the key shift in momentum in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly released messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. After considerable public pressure, the team later pledged $1m in support for families directly impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a move that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and present and former players. Several team members including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement facilities. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man protest must have given the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who share Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the organization's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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