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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic escape feat after another and then winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization prefer to steer clear of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the team later committed $1m in aid for families personally affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months before, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous championship victory at the official residence – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it represents by executives and present and former athletes. Several players such as the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of global players, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income worker at the stadium revealing that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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