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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying comeback feat after another and then winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The play itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for most of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a badly needed uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand spots per game.

The Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were deployed into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports teams quickly issued statements of support with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals personally affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and present and past players. A number of team members such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, include a share in a detention company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current agendas.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have given the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the top official of the investors.

"These men in suits don't get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other 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 raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

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