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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic escape act after another before winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time challenged numerous harmful stereotypes touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's direction after looking for most of the games like the weaker side. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of criticism from national leaders.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 seats each time.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard troops were deployed into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team subsequently committed $one million in support for families personally impacted by the raids but issued no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and hypocritical", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the pioneering professional franchise to end the color barrier in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and past athletes. Several team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-won championship triumph and the following outpouring of team support across the city.

"Can one to support the team?" local writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his personal protest must have brought the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who share similar reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

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

Historical Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 album that chronicles the events has an impoverished worker at the venue stating that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic fans while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its absence of response to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the peak of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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