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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback feat after another before prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key shift in the series in the team's favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and national guard units were sent into the city to react to resulting protests, two of the local soccer clubs promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, even Latinos, are followers of certain leaders. After considerable public pressure, the team subsequently committed $one million in support for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no official criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a move that sports writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that history and the values it represents by officials and present and past athletes. Several players including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have given the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its roster of global stars, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, goes further than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so long 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 reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Connections

Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {