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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not merely a great athletic achievement, possibly the key turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely simple to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were sent into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the operations but made no official criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that local writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the first professional franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and current and former players. Several team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the team?" local columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the squad the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Context and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They've acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Community Connections

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