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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and third-generation Mexican American, the crowning highlight of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her team pulled off multiple dramatic escape act after another and then prevailing in extra innings against the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and the Venezuelan infielder, pulled off a thrilling, decisive play that at the same time challenged many harmful misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past decades.

The play in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to snag a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to second base to record another, game-winning play. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a runner barreled into him, sending him to the ground.

This wasn't merely a great athletic achievement, perhaps the decisive shift in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the weaker team. To her, it was exhilarating, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for Latinos and for the city after months of enforcement actions, troops monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of criticism from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos detained and pursued. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

However, it's exactly simple to be a team supporter these days – for her or for the many of other fans who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as half of the stadium's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Connection with the Team

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 clubs promptly issued statements of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the Dodgers want to stay away of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a significant portion of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are supporters of certain leaders. Under significant public pressure, the organization later committed $1m in support for individuals directly affected by the raids but issued no official condemnation of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in accepting an offer to celebrate their previous World Series win at the White House – a decision that local writers labeled 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 frequent references of that history and the values it embodies by officials and current and former athletes. Several players such as the manager 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 Control and Supporter Conflicts

An additional complication for supporters is that the team are controlled by a large investment group, Guggenheim Partners, whose equity holdings, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a share in a detention corporation that operates enforcement facilities. The group's leadership has said repeatedly that it aims to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to significant mixed feelings among Latino fans in especial – feelings that emerged even in the excitement of this season's hard-fought World Series victory and the ensuing explosion of Dodgers support across the city.

"Can one to root for the team?" local writer one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an thoughtful essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to finally bring himself to view the championship, but he still felt deeply, to the extent that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the team the fortune it needed to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous supporters who have similar misgivings seem to have concluded that they can continue to support the players and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, while pouring scorn on the organization's business leadership. Nowhere was this more clear than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd roared in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

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

Past Background and Community Effect

The problem, however, runs deeper than just the team's current proprietors. The agreement that moved the former franchise 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 transferring the property to the team for a fraction of its market value. A track on a mid-2000s album that chronicles the story has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium revealing that the house he lost to removal is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most widely followed Latino writer and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional dynamic between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been shortchanging its supporters for decades.

"They have put one arm around Hispanic followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the warmer months, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that attendance at matches remained steady, even at the height of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

International Players and Fan Bonds

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