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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying comeback act after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened 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 many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the team's direction after looking for much of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

After intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports teams quickly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant public pressure, the organization later committed $1m in support for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no public criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local columnists described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the first professional team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by executives and current and past athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs detention centers. The group's leadership has said many times that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its roster of international stars, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, goes further than only the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

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