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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, decisive play. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids began in the city in early June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization want to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the organization later committed $one million in aid for families personally affected by the operations but issued no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and current and former players. Several team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, include a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the team the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's present owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers 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 years.

"They've acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

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