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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying escape act after another before winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions promoted about Latinos in the past decades.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from left field to catch a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for most of the games like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

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

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly issued statements of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After significant external demands, the team later committed $1m in support for individuals personally affected by the operations but made no public criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. A number of players such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Control and Supporter Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released financial documents, involve a stake in a private prison corporation that operates detention centers. The group's leadership has said many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain agendas.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series triumph and the following outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to root for the team?" area writer Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have given the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who have similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international players, including 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 the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his athletes but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Connections

Distinguishing the team from its business leadership is not a easy task, {