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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic escape act after another before winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, game-winning sequence that simultaneously challenged numerous negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, possibly the key shift in momentum in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It's so simple to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

When intensified enforcement operations started in Los Angeles in early June, and military troops were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly issued statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the supporters, even Latinos, are followers of current political figures. Under considerable external demands, the team subsequently pledged $1m in support for individuals directly impacted by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the first professional team to break the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular references of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and current and past players. Several players such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or succumbed to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose investments, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a detention corporation that runs detention centers. The group's leadership has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series triumph and the ensuing explosion of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations seem to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its roster of global stars, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, goes further than just the organization's present owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

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