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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying comeback feat after another before prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that at the same time challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in support for individuals directly impacted by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a decision that sports writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the first professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and current and former athletes. Several team members including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention corporation that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to support the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of global players, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his players but booed the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, however, goes further than only the team's present proprietors. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm 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 summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Community Connections

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