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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying comeback feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time challenged numerous negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for most of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

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

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer teams promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of current leaders. After significant external demands, the team later pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the values it embodies by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the manager had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison corporation that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who have similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to back the team and its roster of global players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, however, goes further than just the organization's current owners. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They've acted around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {