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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the most memorable highlight of the baseball championship did not happen during the nail-biting finale on Saturday, when her squad pulled off multiple dramatic escape feat after another and then prevailing in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened in the previous game, when two supporting players, Kike Hernández and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive play that simultaneously challenged numerous harmful stereotypes promoted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The play itself was breathtaking: the outfielder raced in from the outfield to catch a ball he initially misjudged in the stadium lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball moments before a opposing player barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a remarkable sporting achievement, perhaps the key turn in the series in the Dodgers' favor after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a much-required uplift for the community and for the city after a period of immigration raids, troops patrolling the neighborhoods, and a steady drumbeat of negativity from national leaders.

"Kike and Miggy presented this counter-narrative," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an infectious enthusiasm in what they do, being key figures on the team, exhibiting a distinct kind of confidence. They're bombastic, they're cheering, they're taking off their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and pursued. It's so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's exactly simple to be a Dodgers fan these days – for Molina or for the legions of other Latinos who attend faithfully to home games and fill up as many as half of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

The Complicated Connection with the Organization

After aggressive enforcement operations began in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the city to react to resulting demonstrations, two of the city's sports clubs promptly released messages of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

Management has said the Dodgers prefer to stay away of political issues – a stance influenced, perhaps, 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 aid for families directly affected by the operations but made no official criticism of the administration.

Official Visit and Historical Heritage

Months earlier, the team did not hesitate in agreeing to an invitation to celebrate their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports writers described as "disappointing … spineless … and contradictory", considering the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering major league franchise to break the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent invocations of that legacy and the values it embodies by executives and current and past players. Several team members including the coach had voiced reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but then reconsidered or gave in to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the team are controlled by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own released financial documents, include a share in a detention corporation that runs enforcement centers. Guggenheim's executives has said many times that it wants to stay out of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of acquiescence to current policies.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Hispanic fans in particular – sentiments that surfaced even in the euphoria of this season's hard-won championship triumph and the ensuing outpouring of team pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist Erick Galindo agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant essay ruminating on "Dodger blue in our veins, but doubt in our hearts". He was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared deeply, to the extent that he decided his personal boycott must have brought the squad the fortune it required to succeed.

Separating the Team from the Management

Many supporters who share Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its roster of global stars, featuring the Japanese superstar a key player, while expressing disdain on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the packed audience roared in support of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the top official of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits do not get to claim our players from us," the fan said. "We have been with the team for more time than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, however, goes further than just the organization's current proprietors. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the city razing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a elevated area above downtown and then transferring the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A track on a 2005 record that documents the events has an impoverished parking attendant at the venue stating that the home he lost to eviction is now third base.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic dynamic between the team and its fanbase. He calls the team the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by numerous Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other hand for so much time because they have been able to avoid consequences," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to avoid the organization over its lack of response to the raids were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the height of the protests when the city center was under to a nightly restriction.

Global Players and Fan Bonds

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