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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad executed one dramatic escape feat after another and then winning in overtime over the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time upended numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, decisive out. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting moment, possibly the key shift in momentum in the team's direction after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were sent into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer teams quickly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. Under significant external demands, the organization subsequently committed $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the official residence – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first professional franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and present and past players. Several team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought championship victory and the following explosion of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many fans who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international players, including the Asian superstar 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 approval of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in formal attire do not get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the organization's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the land to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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