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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed one death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, decisive out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

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

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and military units were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports teams promptly released messages of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the team later committed $one million in support for families personally affected by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the administration.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the official residence – a move that local writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and current and former players. Several players such as the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but either changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Management

Many supporters who share similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of international players, including the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in suits don't get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant 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 darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"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 summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {