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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time upended numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

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

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

After intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently committed $1m in aid for individuals directly affected by the raids but made no public criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first professional team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and present and former players. A number of team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to current policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, goes further than just the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

International Players and Fan Bonds

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