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For a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series didn't happen during the tense final game on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic comeback feat after another and then winning in extra innings against the Toronto Blue Jays.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, executed a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Latinos in recent decades.

The play in itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to record another, game-winning out. the second baseman, at second base, received the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him backwards.

This wasn't merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the decisive shift in momentum in the Dodgers' favor after looking for much of the games like the weaker team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required morale boost for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, security forces patrolling the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from official sources.

"The players put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone saw Latinos displaying an contagious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a juxtaposition with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened these days."

However, it's exactly straightforward to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the many of other fans who show up faithfully to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After intensified immigration raids started in the city in June, and military units were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer teams promptly released statements of solidarity with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of certain leaders. Under considerable external demands, the team later committed $one million in aid for families personally impacted by the operations but issued no public condemnation of the government.

White House Event and Historical Heritage

Three months before, the team did not hesitate in accepting an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series win at the official residence – a decision that local writers labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering major league team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that history and the values it embodies by executives and present and former athletes. A number of team members including the coach had voiced unwillingness to go to the event during the initial period but either changed their minds or succumbed to demands from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, as per sources and its own published balance sheets, involve a share in a detention company that operates enforcement centers. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of politics, but its critics say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to certain policies.

These factors add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – 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 support the team?" local writer Erick Galindo agonized at the start of the postseason in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he decided his one-man protest must have given the team the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Management

Many supporters who share Galindo's reservations appear to have concluded that they can keep to support the players and its lineup of global stars, featuring the Asian megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the victory celebration at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience cheered in support of the coach and his players but booed the executive and the chief executive of the investors.

"These men in suits do not get to claim our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the Dodgers longer than they have."

Historical Context and Community Effect

The problem, though, runs deeper than just the team's current owners. The deal that moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the late 1950s involved the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill overlooking the city center and then selling the property to the organization for a small part of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that documents the story has an impoverished worker at the venue revealing that the home he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the long, dysfunctional dynamic between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino fans while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to get away with it," the writer noted over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were upended by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a nightly restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a simple task, {