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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time upended many negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for much of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain leaders. After considerable external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in support for families directly impacted by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the official residence – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and present and past players. Several team members including the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that runs enforcement facilities. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international players, including the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's present owners. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area above the city center and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Fan Connections

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