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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying escape act after another before prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past years.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great sporting moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the team's direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. 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 thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military troops were sent into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of current political figures. After significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $1m in aid for individuals personally impacted by the operations but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering major league team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it embodies by officials and present and past players. Several players including the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that operates detention centers. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the team?" local writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay 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 cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the fortune it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who have Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its roster of international players, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Context and Community Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area above the city center and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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