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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team pulled off one death-defying comeback feat after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The play in itself was stunning: the outfielder raced 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, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after appearing for much of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"The players put forth this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so simple to be disheartened these days."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand spots each time.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs promptly released messages of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

Management stated the organization prefer to steer clear of politics – a view colored, possibly, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, including Latinos, are followers of current leaders. After considerable public pressure, the team subsequently pledged $one million in aid for individuals personally impacted by the operations but made no official criticism of the government.

White House Event and Past Legacy

Months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' boast in having been the first major league franchise to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular references of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and current and past athletes. A number of players such as the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the team are owned by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a detention corporation that runs enforcement centers. The group's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of politics, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to certain agendas.

These factors add up to considerable conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to watch the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have given the team the luck it needed to succeed.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Many supporters who have Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the players and its lineup of international stars, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

International Players and Community Connections

Distinguishing the team from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {