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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic escape act after another before prevailing in overtime against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged numerous negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, possibly the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops patrolling the streets, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained Molina. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so simple to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for her or for the many of other fans who attend faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Team

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in early June, and national guard units were deployed into the city to respond to ensuing demonstrations, two of the city's sports teams promptly released statements of solidarity with immigrant families – while the Dodgers.

The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the fans, even Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. Under significant external demands, the organization subsequently committed $one million in support for individuals personally affected by the raids but made no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a move that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the first major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that legacy and the principles it represents by officials and current and past players. Several team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from the organization.

Business Control and Fan Conflicts

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a detention company that runs enforcement facilities. The group's executives has said many times that it aims to stay out of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-fought championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across the city.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "team loyalty in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the luck it needed to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many fans who have similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to back the players and its lineup of global stars, including the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Context and Neighborhood Impact

The problem, though, runs deeper than only the organization's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the city razing three low-income Hispanic communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 album that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They've acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the organization over its absence of reaction to the raids were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was under to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Fan Connections

Separating the squad from its corporate owners is not a easy matter, {