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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying comeback act after another before prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time upended numerous negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend 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 enforcement operations started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports teams quickly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of current political figures. Under significant public pressure, the team later committed $one million in support for individuals directly impacted by the operations but made no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first 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 executives and present and former athletes. Several team members including the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the squad the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its lineup of international players, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

"These men in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. 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 a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

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

International Stars and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {