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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning sequence that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, decisive out. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for the community and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," said the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the organization later pledged $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the operations but made no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and present and past players. Several players such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but either changed their minds or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who have Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of global players, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, however, goes further than just the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above the city center and then selling the property to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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