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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying comeback act after another before winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the decisive turn in momentum in the team's direction after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in June, and military troops were deployed into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the organization subsequently pledged $1m in aid for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and current and past athletes. Several players such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own released financial documents, include a share in a detention company that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous fans who share Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its roster of international stars, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Community Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

International Players and Fan Connections

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {