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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying comeback feat after another before prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time upended many harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's direction after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe 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 exactly simple to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand spots per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids began in the city in June, and military units were sent into the city to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. Under significant external demands, the organization later committed $1m in support for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and present and former players. Several team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the team?" local writer one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've acted around Latino fans 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 summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

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