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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 nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad executed one dramatic comeback feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions promoted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic moment, possibly the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan these days – for her or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in early June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams quickly released messages of support with immigrant families – but not the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant public pressure, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a move that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it embodies by officials and present and past athletes. Several team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but either reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, include a share in a private prison company that operates detention centers. The group's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Management

Many supporters who have Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can keep to back the players and its roster of global players, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, goes further than just the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he lost to removal is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic 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 team over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {