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In the eyes of Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship didn't occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad executed one death-defying escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came a game earlier, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a thrilling, decisive sequence that simultaneously upended numerous negative stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive out. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, sending him backwards.

This was not just a remarkable athletic moment, possibly the decisive turn in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops monitoring the streets, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "The world saw Latinos showing an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It is so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other fans who attend regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

When intensified immigration raids began in the city in June, and military troops were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly released messages of support with affected communities – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. Under significant public pressure, the organization later pledged $1m in aid for families directly impacted by the raids but issued no official criticism of the administration.

Official Event and Past Legacy

Three months before, the organization did not delay in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the official residence – a move that local columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent references of that legacy and the values it represents by executives and current and past players. A number of players including the manager 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 Fan Dilemmas

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. The group's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

All of that add up to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic supporters in especial – sentiments that surfaced even in the excitement of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have brought the team the luck it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who share similar misgivings appear to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its lineup of global players, including the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the packed audience roared in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, goes further than only the team's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s involved the city demolishing three low-income Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then transferring the property to the organization for a small part of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s record that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even harmful devotion by numerous Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for years.

"They've put one arm around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano noted over the summer, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of response to the raids were upended by the awkward fact that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Community Connections

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