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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape act after another before prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in the past decades.

The moment in itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to second base to secure another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a great athletic moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the team's favor after appearing for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

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

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military troops were deployed into the city to respond to resulting protests, two of the local soccer clubs promptly issued messages of support with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

The team president has said the organization want to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a significant portion of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After considerable external demands, the organization subsequently pledged $one million in support for families directly affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series victory at the official residence – a move that local columnists labeled as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first professional team to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and present and past athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Business Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further complication for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a private prison corporation that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to root for the Dodgers?" area writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have given the squad the luck it needed to win.

Separating the Team from the Owners

Numerous fans who share Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of global players, featuring the Asian megastar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the municipality razing three working-class Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches did not dip, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Community Bonds

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