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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, 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 chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and military units were sent into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports teams quickly released messages of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention centers. The group's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local writer one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of global stars, including the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of reaction 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 under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Connections

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