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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another before prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, game-winning play that simultaneously challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then fired 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 collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's direction after appearing for much of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant drumbeat of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of confidence. 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 thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be disheartened these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan these days – for her or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to matches and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports clubs promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the Dodgers.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a view colored, perhaps, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. Under considerable public pressure, the organization later committed $1m in aid for individuals directly impacted by the operations but issued no public condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Past Legacy

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league team to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. Several team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, as per media reports and its own published balance sheets, include a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's executives 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 type of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won World Series triumph and the following explosion of team pride across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have brought the team the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who share Galindo's misgivings appear to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Asian superstar Shohei Ohtani, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. At no place was this more evident than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the team's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a elevated area above downtown and then selling the property to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have put one arm around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that turnout at home games remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Community Connections

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