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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic moment, possibly the key shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained 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 fans who attend faithfully to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs quickly issued statements of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of certain political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently committed $1m in aid for families personally affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Past Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the principles it represents by executives and current and past athletes. Several players such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released financial documents, include a stake in a detention company that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who share Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its roster of international stars, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. 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 manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that brought the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land 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 stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

International Players and Community Connections

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