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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the World Series didn't occur during the tense final game last Saturday, when her team pulled off one dramatic comeback act after another and then winning in overtime over the Toronto Blue Jays.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously upended many negative stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent years.

The moment itself was breathtaking: Hernández raced in from the outfield to snag a ball he at first misjudged in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a opposing player collided with him, sending him backwards.

This wasn't just a great athletic moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the underdog side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this alternative story," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being 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 contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be demoralized these days."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a Dodgers supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's fifty thousand seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Organization

When aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in early June, and military units were deployed into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the local soccer teams quickly issued statements of support with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

The team president stated the organization prefer to stay away of politics – a stance colored, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team later pledged $1m in support for families personally impacted by the operations but made no public condemnation of the administration.

White House Event and Historical Legacy

Months before, the organization did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the official residence – a decision that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the regular references of that history and the principles it embodies by officials and current and former players. Several players including the manager had expressed unwillingness to travel to the White House during the initial period but either changed their minds or succumbed to pressure from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that runs detention facilities. The group's executives has stated repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the investment – are their own type of acquiescence to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area writer one observer reflected at the start of the playoffs in an thoughtful article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". He couldn't finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it required to win.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar reservations seem to have decided that they can continue to back the players and its roster of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the organization's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"These men in formal attire don't get to take our players from us," the fan said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The problem, however, goes further than only the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three low-income Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a small part of its actual worth. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income worker at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, possibly southern California most influential Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the franchise and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its fans for years.

"They've acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when calls to avoid the organization over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when the city center was subject to a nightly restriction.

Global Stars and Fan Bonds

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