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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale last Saturday, when her team executed one death-defying comeback act after another before prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, perhaps the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 spots each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports teams promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of current political figures. After significant external demands, the organization later pledged $one million in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but made no public condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and current and former players. Several team members including the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own released financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who share Galindo's reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international stars, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's current proprietors. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time 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 contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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