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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended numerous negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so easy to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations began in the city in early June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs promptly released messages of solidarity with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. After considerable external demands, the team subsequently committed $1m in aid for individuals personally impacted by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the official residence – a decision that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and present and past players. Several team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement facilities. The group's executives has stated many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous fans who have similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere 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 manager and his players but jeered the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, however, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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