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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team executed multiple death-defying escape feat after another before prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a great athletic achievement, perhaps the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military troops were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, even Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in support for families personally affected by the operations but issued no public criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Legacy

Three months before, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the official residence – a decision that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and current and former players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention facilities. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the following explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of global players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further than just the team's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that documents the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Community Bonds

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