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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't occur during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously challenged numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a great athletic moment, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other Latinos who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were sent into the city to react to resulting protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president stated the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable portion of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. After significant public pressure, the team subsequently committed $1m in support for families personally affected by the operations but made no official condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that history and the values it represents by officials and present and former players. A number of team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a detention company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of team pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have given the team the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

"These men in formal attire do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then selling the property to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a evening curfew.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {