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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying comeback act after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: 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 record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for the city after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When intensified enforcement operations began in the city in June, and national guard units were sent into the city to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable external demands, the team subsequently pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the operations but made no public condemnation of the administration.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the values it embodies by executives and present and former athletes. Several team members such as the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many fans who have similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Historical Context and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have put one arm 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 noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {