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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed one death-defying escape act after another before winning in extra innings over the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The play in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a great sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

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

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Connection with the Team

When aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and military units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports clubs quickly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the team later committed $one million in support for families personally affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the government.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and former players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement centers. The group's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing explosion of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our hearts". He was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have brought the squad the fortune it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Community Impact

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the events has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the long, problematic relationship between the team 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 years.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly curfew.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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