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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 happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad executed multiple death-defying comeback act after another and then winning in overtime against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two supporting players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time upended many negative misconceptions touted about Hispanic people in the past years.

The play itself was stunning: Hernández charged in from left field to catch a ball he initially lost in the stadium lights, then fired it to second base to secure another, decisive out. the second baseman, positioned nearby, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great athletic achievement, possibly the key shift in the series in the team's direction after appearing for most of the games like the underdog side. To her, it was thrilling, politically and culturally, a badly needed uplift for the community and for the city after months of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the neighborhoods, and a constant stream of negativity from official sources.

"The players put forth this alternative story," said the professor. "Everyone witnessed Latinos displaying an contagious pride and joy in what they do, acting as key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of confidence. They are bombastic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"This represented such a juxtaposition with what we observe on the news – raids, Latinos detained and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely simple to be a team supporter these days – for Molina or for the many of other Latinos who show up regularly to home games and fill up as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 seats per game.

A Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified immigration raids started in Los Angeles in June, and national guard troops were sent into the area to respond to ensuing protests, two of the local sports clubs quickly released statements of support with affected communities – while the baseball team.

The team president has said the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance colored, possibly, by the reality that a sizable minority of the fans, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. After considerable public pressure, the team later pledged $1m in support for families directly affected by the operations 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 World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and hypocritical", considering the team's boast in having been the first major league team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the frequent references of that history and the principles it represents by officials and current and past players. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed reluctance to travel to the event during the initial period but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from team management.

Business Ownership and Fan Conflicts

An additional complication for fans is that the team are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to media reports and its own released balance sheets, include a stake in a detention corporation that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's executives has said repeatedly that it wants to stay out of political matters, but its detractors say the silence – and the investment – are their own form of acquiescence to certain policies.

All of that contribute to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic supporters in especial – feelings that surfaced even in the excitement of this year's hard-won World Series victory and the following outpouring of team support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" area columnist one observer agonized at the start of the playoffs in an elegant article ruminating on "Dodger blue in our blood, but doubt in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to watch the World Series, but he still felt strongly, to the extent that he decided his personal protest must have brought the squad the fortune it needed to win.

Separating the Players from the Owners

Numerous fans who share similar misgivings appear to have decided that they can keep to support the team and its lineup of international players, featuring the Japanese megastar a key player, while expressing disdain on the organization's business overlords. 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 manager and his athletes but booed the executive and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits don't get to take our boys in blue from us," Molina said. "We've been with the team longer than they have."

Past Background and Neighborhood Effect

The issue, though, runs deeper than only the team's current owners. The agreement that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Latino communities on a elevated area overlooking the city center and then selling the land to the team for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a mid-2000s album that documents the story has an low-income parking attendant at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most widely followed Mexican American columnist and media personality, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, dysfunctional relationship between the franchise and its fanbase. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an excessive, even unhealthy devotion by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for decades.

"They have acted around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other for so long because they have been able to get away with it," Arellano noted over the summer, when demands to boycott the organization over its lack of response to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the uncomfortable reality that turnout at matches remained steady, even at the peak of the demonstrations when downtown LA was under to a evening curfew.

International Stars and Fan Connections

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