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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another before winning 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, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from left field to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a great athletic achievement, possibly the key shift in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be disheartened these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the city to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in support for individuals directly impacted by the operations but made no public criticism of the administration.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that local writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and current and past players. Several players including the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a stake in a private prison company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain agendas.

All of that add up to significant conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many fans who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of global players, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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