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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the World Series didn't occur during the nail-biting finale last Saturday, when her squad executed one dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting athletes, Kike Hernández and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that simultaneously challenged many negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from the outfield to catch a ball he at first lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to the infield to record another, game-winning out. Rojas, at second base, received the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This was not merely a great athletic achievement, possibly the key shift in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the series like the weaker team. For Molina, it was exhilarating, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for Latinos and for Los Angeles after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady stream of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, exhibiting a different kind of confidence. They are energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so simple to be demoralized right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team fan nowadays – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up faithfully to home games and occupy as many as half of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

A Complicated Relationship with the Team

When aggressive enforcement operations started in the city in June, and military troops were sent into the area to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's soccer clubs promptly issued messages of solidarity with immigrant families – but not the baseball team.

Management has said the organization want to stay away of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a significant portion of the supporters, including Latinos, are supporters of current political figures. After considerable external demands, the organization subsequently committed $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the operations but issued no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Legacy

Months before, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous championship win at the White House – a move that sports writers described as "pathetic … weak … and contradictory", considering the team's pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to end the racial segregation in the 1940s and the frequent invocations of that history and the principles it represents by executives and current and past players. Several team members including the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Conflicts

An additional issue for supporters is that the Dodgers are controlled by a corporate behemoth, Guggenheim Partners, whose investments, according to media reports and its own published financial documents, include a share in a private prison company that runs enforcement facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated repeatedly that it aims to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own type of compliance to current agendas.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship victory and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across the city.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" local writer one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "team loyalty in our veins, but uncertainty in our hearts". Galindo couldn't finally bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have given the squad the luck it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Players from the Owners

Numerous supporters who have similar reservations appear to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its roster of global players, including the Japanese megastar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the team's business overlords. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the coach and his players but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in formal attire don't get to claim our players from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team for more time than they have."

Historical Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the team's current proprietors. The agreement that brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to the city in the 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking downtown and then transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A track on a 2005 album that documents the events has an low-income parking attendant at the venue revealing that the home he forfeited to removal is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, perhaps southern California most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its fanbase. He calls the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an excessive, even harmful devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They have acted around Latino fans while profiting from them with the other for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

Global Players and Community Connections

Distinguishing the squad from its business leadership is not a easy matter, {