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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple death-defying comeback feat after another before prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

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

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Mixed Connection with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations began in the city in June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to resulting protests, two of the local soccer teams promptly issued statements of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current political figures. Under significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "disappointing … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering professional franchise to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and current and former players. A number of players including the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or gave in to demands from the organization.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention centers. The group's leadership has stated many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of team pride across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal protest must have given the squad the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of global players, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Historical Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, goes further than just the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {