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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying escape act after another before prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, perhaps the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the games like the weaker side. 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, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the operations but made no official condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former players. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area columnist one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have brought the team the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who have Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its roster of international players, including the Asian superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in suits don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Fan Connections

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