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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic escape feat after another and then winning in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously upended many negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids started in the city in June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the operations but issued no official criticism of the administration.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that local writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and present and former players. A number of players such as the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison corporation that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to current agendas.

These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" local writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have given the team the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Management

Numerous supporters who have Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its roster of global stars, including the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's corporate overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in formal attire don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Community Impact

The problem, however, goes further than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s required the city razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Community Bonds

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {