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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously challenged numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting achievement, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard troops were deployed into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. Under significant public pressure, the team later committed $1m in aid for families personally affected by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their 2024 championship victory at the White House – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own published balance sheets, include a stake in a detention company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that contribute to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the team's current owners. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its audience. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've 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," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Community Connections

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