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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape act after another before prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously challenged numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great sporting moment, possibly the decisive turn in momentum in the team's direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, even Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. Under considerable external demands, the organization later committed $one million in support for families directly impacted by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and present and former players. Several players including the coach had voiced reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have given the team the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its roster of international stars, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, goes further than only the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the team over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Stars and Community Connections

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