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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying escape feat after another and then winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a great athletic moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy 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 contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After intensified enforcement operations began in the city in early June, and military units were deployed into the city to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

The team president has said the organization want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain leaders. After considerable public pressure, the team subsequently pledged $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the operations but issued no public criticism of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and current and former players. Several team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a detention corporation that runs enforcement centers. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, 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 Latino supporters in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the following explosion of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local writer one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue 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 believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many fans who share similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain 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 packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, goes further than only the organization's present owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm 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 avoid the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening curfew.

Global Stars and Community Bonds

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy task, {