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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time upended many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Team

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams promptly released statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but issued no public criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and present and past athletes. A number of team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, include a share in a private prison company that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said many times that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

These factors add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"These men in formal attire don't get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than only the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Community Connections

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