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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, 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 promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and national guard units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of current political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in support for individuals personally impacted by the raids but issued no official criticism of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and current and past players. Several team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a detention company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits do not get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Community Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a easy task, {