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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended numerous harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world witnessed 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 energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the city to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant external demands, the organization subsequently committed $one million in support for families directly impacted by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league team to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and former players. Several team members such as the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of global players, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Background and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

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