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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying comeback feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball moments before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This was not just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"The players presented this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the many of other fans who attend regularly to matches and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in the city in early June, and military units were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs quickly issued messages of support with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

Management has said the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the supporters, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. Under significant external demands, the team later pledged $one million in aid for families directly affected by the operations but issued no official criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that local columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the first major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it represents by executives and current and past players. A number of team members such as the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention company that operates detention 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 financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought World Series victory and the following explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but doubt in our minds". He couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who share similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's corporate overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, though, goes further than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its market value. A song on a mid-2000s record that chronicles the story has an impoverished worker at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling 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 unhealthy following by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a evening restriction.

Global Players and Community Connections

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