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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield 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 moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the team's favor after appearing for much of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – 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 fifty thousand spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and military troops were deployed into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs promptly released statements of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the organization prefer to steer clear of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. After considerable public pressure, the team subsequently committed $1m in aid for families directly affected by the operations but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a private prison company that operates enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the following outpouring of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many fans who have similar misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to support the team and its roster of global players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the coach and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Community Bonds

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