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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged numerous negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the team's favor after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military units were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the local sports clubs quickly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under significant public pressure, the team later pledged $one million in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and present and former players. A number of team members including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, 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 repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have brought the team the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of global players, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Impact

The problem, however, goes further than only the team's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {