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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions promoted about Latinos in recent decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for much of the games like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly released statements of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $one million in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Months before, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that history and the values it embodies by executives and current and former athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that operates enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

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

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive 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 Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than just the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

Global Stars and Community Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {