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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple death-defying escape act after another and then winning in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The moment itself was stunning: 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 out. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting moment, possibly the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' direction after looking for much of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos displaying an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's exactly simple to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in June, and military troops were sent into the city to react to ensuing protests, two of the local sports teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of current political figures. Under considerable public pressure, the organization later committed $one million in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no public criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous championship victory at the official residence – a decision that local writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league team to break the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that history and the principles it represents by executives and present and past players. Several team members such as the coach had voiced reluctance to go to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement facilities. The group's executives has said many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his personal protest must have brought the team the luck it required to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Background and Community Effect

The problem, however, goes further than only the team's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most widely followed Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for decades.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

Separating the team from its business leadership is not a simple task, {