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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying comeback feat after another before prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to secure another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, possibly the key turn in the series in the team's favor after looking for most of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Mixed Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids began in the city in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management stated the Dodgers 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 certain political figures. Under significant external demands, the organization later committed $one million in support for individuals personally impacted by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that local writers labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and present and past players. A number of players including the coach had expressed reluctance to go to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

An additional complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own released financial documents, include a share in a detention company that operates detention facilities. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of team support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, 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.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its roster of global stars, including the Asian superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's present owners. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Community Connections

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