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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not happen during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another and then winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams quickly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for families personally impacted by the operations but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the official residence – a decision that local columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and current and past players. Several team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, include a share in a private prison corporation that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated 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 compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating 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 deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Management

Many supporters who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring 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 worker at the stadium stating that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They've acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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