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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously upended numerous harmful stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past years.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor 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 the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

When intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable public pressure, the organization later pledged $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, include a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have given the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous fans who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of global players, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, goes further than only the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Community Connections

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