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In the eyes of a lifelong Dodgers fan and longtime Mexican American, the crowning moment of the World Series did not occur during the nail-biting final game on Saturday, when her team executed one dramatic escape feat after another and then winning in extra innings against the opposing team.

It happened a game earlier, when two second-tier athletes, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, executed a electrifying, decisive play that at the same time challenged numerous negative stereotypes touted about Hispanic people in recent decades.

The moment in itself was stunning: the outfielder charged in from the outfield to snag a ball he initially lost in the bright lights, then fired it to second base to record another, decisive out. Rojas, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner collided with him, knocking him to the ground.

This wasn't just a great sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in the series in the team's favor after looking for much of the series like the weaker side. For Molina, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a constant drumbeat of criticism from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy presented this alternative story," said Molina. "Everyone witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being key figures on the team, having a distinct kind of masculinity. They're energetic, they're yelling, they're removing their shirts."

"It was such a contrast with what we see on the news – raids, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It's so easy to be demoralized these days."

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

A Complicated Relationship with the Organization

After aggressive immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, and military units were deployed into the area to respond to resulting protests, two of the local sports clubs quickly released messages of support with affected communities – but not the Dodgers.

Management stated the Dodgers prefer to steer clear of politics – a stance influenced, perhaps, by the reality that a sizable portion of the fans, including Latinos, are supporters of certain political figures. After significant public pressure, the team later committed $1m in aid for families personally impacted by the raids but issued no official criticism of the government.

White House Visit and Historical Heritage

Months before, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to mark their previous World Series victory at the White House – a decision that sports columnists labeled as "pathetic … spineless … and contradictory", given the team's boast in having been the first major league team to end the color barrier in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it represents by officials and present and former athletes. A number of team members such as the manager had expressed reluctance to travel to the White House during the initial period but then changed their minds or gave in to pressure from team management.

Corporate Ownership and Fan Dilemmas

A further issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, according to sources and its own published financial documents, involve a share in a detention company that runs detention facilities. Guggenheim's leadership has stated many times that it wants to remain neutral of politics, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own form of compliance to certain agendas.

These factors contribute to significant conflicted emotions among Latino supporters in particular – sentiments that emerged even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the following outpouring of Dodgers support across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the Dodgers?" area columnist one observer agonized at the beginning of the playoffs in an elegant article pondering on "Dodger blue in our veins, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo couldn't ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still cared strongly, to the point that he believed his personal boycott must have given the team the luck it required to succeed.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Many fans who have similar reservations appear to have concluded that they can continue to back the team and its roster of global players, including the Japanese megastar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's corporate leadership. At no place was this more evident than at the championship parade at Dodger Stadium on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in support of the manager and his athletes but jeered the team president and the chief executive of the investors.

"The executives in formal attire do not get to take our boys in blue from us," the fan said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Community Effect

The issue, however, runs deeper than just the team's present proprietors. The deal that moved the former franchise to the city in the late 1950s required the city demolishing three working-class Latino neighborhoods on a hill above downtown and then selling the land to the organization for a fraction of its actual worth. A song on a 2005 record that chronicles the events has an low-income parking attendant at the stadium stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

Gustavo Arellano, perhaps southern California most influential Latino writer and broadcaster, sees a more troubling side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He describes the Dodgers the Flamin' Hot Cheetos of baseball, "a corporate entity with an undue, even harmful following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its fans for years.

"They've put one arm around Latino followers while profiting from them with the other hand for so long because they have been able to get away with it," the writer wrote over the summer, when demands to boycott the team over its absence of reaction to the enforcement actions were contradicted by the awkward fact that attendance at home games remained steady, even at the peak of the protests when the city center was subject to a evening restriction.

International Players and Fan Bonds

Separating the squad from its business leadership is not a easy task, {