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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the key turn in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. 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 many of other fans who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs quickly released messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in support for individuals personally impacted by the raids but made no public condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former athletes. A number of players such as the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim'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 type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of international players, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have 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," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Fan Connections

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {