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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, game-winning sequence that at the same time upended many harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for most of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's entirely simple to be a team fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

After 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 sports clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a view colored, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team later pledged $one million in aid for families directly affected by the raids but made no official condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and present and former athletes. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a detention company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current agendas.

These factors contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team'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 capacity crowd cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, however, goes further than only the team's present owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the property to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

International Players and Fan Connections

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