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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic comeback act after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged 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 out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the key turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

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

A Complicated Connection with the Team

After intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer teams promptly issued statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team later committed $one million in aid for individuals personally affected by the raids but made no official condemnation of the administration.

Official Event and Historical Legacy

Months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a move that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by executives and current and former players. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current agendas.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man protest must have given the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of global stars, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain 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 packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further than only the team's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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