After Juan Soto inked a 15-year $765 million free agent contract with the New York Mets the other week, a story went viral about his decision. It alleged the 26-year-old from the Dominican Republic chose to turn down a nearly identical offer from the New York Yankees because, when playing for them last season, he was appalled to discover some of his team-mates were avid Trump supporters. Like so much on social media, the yarn had been cut from whole cloth.
For Yankees’ fans desperate to find any justification for him rejecting their ardent courtship the hoax provided some brief solace.
See, in their entitled minds, nobody could ever possibly choose the Mets, a perennial losing franchise, over the Yankees, the most illustrious club in the history of baseball. To a fan base steeped in winning and often rightly accused of arrogance, this rejection has been described by the New York Post as their “biggest off-season loss in recent memory”.
No exaggeration there. This is not how it’s supposed to be. The very idea of a blue-chip player, especially one who has already worn pinstripes and is about to enter the prime of his career, opting for Queens, of all places, over the Bronx is so outlandish many are still searching for some non-sporting explanation.
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“Please don’t talk about money,” said John Sterling, long-time radio voice of the Yankees, capturing the bafflement. “If the Yankees offered him $750 million and the Mets offered him $765 [million], there’s no difference. You certainly would never see the difference. It’s so much money per year. The Yankees have the name, and they have a field that’s perfect for Soto. A short right field for home runs and a big left centrefield for singles and doubles, and also the best protector in the game in Aaron Judge.”
Founded in 1903, the Yankees have won 27 World Series and boast several teams that have defined eras in American life, including the 1927 edition featuring the infamous line-up known as “Murderers’ Row”. They are also the best-known baseball club on the planet. Count the number of people wearing their distinctive NY hats in any city in the world.
Tapping into that rich heritage, a portion of centrefield at Yankee Stadium is devoted to Monument Park, an open-air museum commemorating evocative names like Ruth, Mantle and DiMaggio. Styling themselves as blue bloods, guardians of hallowed traditions, they retain antiquated regulations such as prohibiting players from having beards. This is for no apparent reason other than to show they are a cut above all others.
Just across the Throgs Neck Bridge, the upstart Mets first came into being in 1962, a debut season of such spectacular awfulness their ramshackle antics provided comic fodder for Jimmy Breslin’s hilarious and aptly titled book, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
Thirty years later, they put together the highest payroll the sport had yet seen but were still bad enough to inspire another book, Bob Klapisch’s classic The Worst Team Money Could Buy. In between, there were a pair of unlikely World Series triumphs in 1969 and 1986, but they are as famous for always finding a way to lose as the Yankees are for eking out epic victories.
“If the Mets can win the World Series,” said Tom Seaver, their star pitcher in 1969, “the United States can get out of Vietnam.”
The contrast in history and pedigree is why the disbelieving Yankees’ faithful have spent the past two weeks sifting through the wreckage, struggling to comprehend what just happened, and inevitably wrapping themselves in conspiracies. According to one report, Soto didn’t want to return to Yankee Stadium because his family, his driver and his chef were all badly treated by security guards there on different occasions last season.
Another story claimed the Mets won his hand by offering him a free corporate suite for every home game, a common perk the old-school Yankees’ ownership steadfastly refuse to afford any of their stars.
There is another perfectly good reason that could have influenced Soto. A notion so preposterous it’s not even on the radar of Yankee nation. Whisper it, some reckon he opted for the Mets because he thinks they have a brighter future just now than their crosstown neighbours.
Not least because their owner Steve Cohen, a boyhood fan and an investor with a net worth of $22 billion, has much deeper pockets than his Yankee counterparts, the Steinbrenner family. And a desperation to win epitomised by him handing Soto the richest contract in the history of American sport, replete with a signing bonus of $75 million. The premium you pay to hire the hardest hitter to get out in baseball.
These two rivals have met with the title on the line only once, in the Subway Series of 2000. Before Derek Jeter could lead off the Yankee batting in game four that year, he first had to wait out the prematch entertainment at Shea Stadium. As he suffered through the Baha Men’s performance of Who Let the Dogs Out?, he caught the eye of Jerry Seinfeld, the Mets’ superfan sitting behind home plate. Jeter shook his head at the comedian as if to say his team couldn’t possibly lose to a club offering up that kind of shtick before a vital showdown. And they didn’t. About to win their fourth series in five seasons, the Yankees could afford to be smug back then. Perhaps not any more.
