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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series did not occur during the tense final game on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic comeback feat after another before winning in extra innings over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a thrilling, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many harmful stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community 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 presented this alternative story," explained Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's exactly straightforward to be a Dodgers fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard units were sent into the area to respond to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management stated the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a view influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of current leaders. After significant external demands, the organization subsequently committed $one million in aid for families directly impacted by the operations but issued no official condemnation of the administration.

White House Visit and Historical Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not hesitate in accepting an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a move that sports writers labeled as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering 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 players. A number of team members including the manager had voiced reluctance to go to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Control and Fan Dilemmas

An additional complication for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a private prison corporation that runs enforcement facilities. The group's executives has stated many times that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" local columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt strongly, to the point that he believed his one-man protest must have brought the team the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many supporters who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its roster of global players, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the top official of the ownership group.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Impact

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the team's present owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality razing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a fraction of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the home he forfeited to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They've acted around Hispanic fans while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable fact that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was under to a nightly curfew.

Global Stars and Community Connections

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