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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape act after another before winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports clubs quickly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization prefer to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. Under significant public pressure, the team later pledged $one million in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but made no public condemnation of the administration.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and present and past athletes. A number of players including the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship victory and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, goes further than just the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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