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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously challenged numerous negative misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for most of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of enforcement actions, security forces patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were sent into the area to react to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of politics – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. After considerable external demands, the organization subsequently pledged $1m in aid for individuals personally impacted by the raids but made no official criticism of the government.

Official Event and Historical Legacy

Months before, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that sports columnists described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the values it represents by executives and present and former players. Several players including the coach had voiced reluctance to travel to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention corporation that operates detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain agendas.

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

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share similar misgivings seem to have decided that they can keep to support the players and its roster of global players, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, 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 the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

"These men in formal attire do not get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the organization's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Hispanic communities on a hill above downtown and then selling the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that documents the story has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American writer and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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