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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team executed one death-defying comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a great sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When intensified enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports teams promptly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in aid for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no official criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months before, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the first major league team to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

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 investments, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention company that operates enforcement facilities. The group's executives has stated many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his personal protest must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who have Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to support the players and its roster of global stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an low-income worker at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Community Bonds

Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {