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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off one death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended numerous negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a great athletic moment, perhaps the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for much of the series like the underdog side. For Molina, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

After aggressive immigration raids started in the city in June, and national guard units were sent into the area to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $one million in aid for individuals directly affected by the operations but issued no public criticism of the government.

Official Visit and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that sports writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and present and former players. Several players including the manager had expressed unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released financial documents, include a share in a private prison corporation that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have given the team the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many fans who have Galindo's misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, goes further than only the organization's current proprietors. The deal that brought the former franchise to the city in the 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They've put one arm around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly curfew.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a simple task, {