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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "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 bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local sports clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of certain political figures. After considerable external demands, the team later pledged $one million in aid for individuals personally impacted by the operations but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by executives and current and past athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

An additional complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs detention facilities. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to certain agendas.

These factors contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who have similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can continue to support the team and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, however, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the events has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They've put one arm around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Community Bonds

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {