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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another before prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that at the same time upended numerous negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see 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 fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations began in the city in early June, and national guard units were sent into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and present and past athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison company that operates enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain agendas.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have given the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its roster of international players, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's present proprietors. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Community Connections

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a simple task, {