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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying comeback feat after another and then winning in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time upended many negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much 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 monitoring the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

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

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up faithfully to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When aggressive immigration raids started in the city in June, and military units were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local soccer clubs quickly issued messages of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. After significant external demands, the team subsequently pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly impacted by the raids but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to mark their previous championship win at the White House – a move that local columnists described as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. Several team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the event during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that operates enforcement facilities. The group's executives has said many times that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current agendas.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local writer Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have given the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many supporters who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international players, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue 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 ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Community Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a hill overlooking the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was subject to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a simple matter, {