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For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team executed multiple dramatic comeback act after another before winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier players, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The moment 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 secure another, decisive play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the key turn in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the series like the weaker side. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for Los Angeles after a period of enforcement actions, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," explained the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of masculinity. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter these days – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who attend regularly to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Connection with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations began in the city in early June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local sports teams promptly issued messages of solidarity with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

Management has said the organization want to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. After considerable external demands, the organization subsequently committed $1m in aid for individuals personally affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the organization did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a move that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the first professional franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and former athletes. A number of team members including the manager had voiced unwillingness to travel to the White House during the first term but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own released balance sheets, involve a share in a private prison corporation that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of compliance to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-fought championship victory and the ensuing outpouring of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to root for the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer agonized at the start of the postseason in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our minds". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he decided his one-man protest must have brought the team the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Owners

Many fans who share Galindo's reservations seem to have concluded that they can keep to back the team and its roster of international stars, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate overlords. At no place was this more clear than at the victory celebration at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the coach and his players but booed the team president and the top official of the investors.

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

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, goes further than just the organization's present proprietors. The deal that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A track on a 2005 record that documents the story has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most widely followed Mexican American writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They have acted around Hispanic followers while picking their pockets with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the team over its absence of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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