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For Natalia Molina and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship didn't happen during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad executed one dramatic comeback act after another and then prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, decisive sequence that at the same time upended numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Latinos in the past years.

The play itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to catch a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, positioned nearby, received the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a remarkable athletic achievement, possibly the key shift in momentum in the Dodgers' direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog team. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"The players presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos showing an contagious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

However, it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for her or for the legions of other Latinos who show up regularly to matches and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats each time.

The Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids started in Los Angeles in early June, and national guard units were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the city's sports clubs promptly issued statements of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant minority of the fans, including some Hispanic fans, are supporters of current leaders. After significant public pressure, the organization later committed $1m in aid for individuals personally affected by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

Official Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous championship victory at the White House – a decision that local writers described as "pathetic … weak … and hypocritical", given the team's boast in having been the first professional team to break the color barrier in the 1940s and the regular invocations of that legacy and the principles it embodies by executives and current and past athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or gave in to demands from team management.

Business Control and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a stake in a detention corporation that operates detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its critics say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following outpouring of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Is it okay to support the Dodgers?" area writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the championship, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he decided his personal protest must have brought the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many supporters who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Asian superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on Monday, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his players but jeered the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Context and Neighborhood Effect

The problem, however, goes further than just the team's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the late 1950s involved the city razing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then selling 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 impoverished worker at the stadium stating that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly southern California most widely followed Mexican American columnist and broadcaster, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its audience. He calls the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even unhealthy 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 hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer noted over the warmer months, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the raids were upended by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Fan Connections

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