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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization want to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After significant public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $one million in support for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and present and past players. A number of players including the manager had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino supporters in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, goes further than just the organization's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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