DUring The last match of the baseball season in 2024 – While the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in match 5 of the World Series to win a championship in front of a closed stronghold of disappointed New Yorkers – there were still no fans of the Yankees did not buy 22 Juan Soto jerseys. It was remarkable because at the end of the match, Soto was a free agent.
He had been exchanged in New York of the Padres de San Diego – where he landed after a bombs trade in the Washington national team who wrote him and with whom he won a world series in 2019 – just before his walking year. But Soto quickly got attached to the fervent base of fans. In 2024, it was 80% better than the marble average according to WRC + and, with the imposing judge Aaron who struck behind him, led the American League in the marked points. And it seemed that his boastful adapting with the famous franchise that brought him back to the fall classic for the first time since the age of 20.
And so, even if the season decreased around them, Yankees fans came for the fine costly stripes sold in team stores. Some of them were Dominicans who swore to enjoy their compatriot wherever he went. Some of them simply wanted a memory of a summer of the Bronx which is worth commemorating. Some of them assumed that it would be back.
Friday evening, it was. SOTO wandering the right field to Yankee Stadium. Soto jumps on the plate and raises his cap towards the crowd. But now, the gesture was cheeky, a joke with its new teammates who had pulled into the canoe on the way it would be funny, and the crowd encountered it with resounding hoots.
During the winter, New York dishes made Soto the richest professional athlete in North America, signing it with a $ 765 million contract of 15 years. It was the cornerstone of an evolution of several years in the manufacture of dishes, from very unhappy to heavy strikers who coincided with the über billionaire Steve Cohen buying the club. Of course, Soto could have been the richest professional athlete in North America who still played for the Yankees – he would have rejected their offer of a 16 -year agreement worth $ 760 million. Whatever the affinity he felt for Yankees was worth less than $ 5 million. Or maybe it was just New York he loved.
Friday evening was the start of a metro series between the food and the Yankees which could have been the best match of the first “weekend of rivalry” of MLB even without the Soto of all this. For the third time since the beginnings of the Subway series in 1997, the two teams have the sole possession of first place in their respective divisions. The two have entered the season with expectations from top to bottom and have so far been up to par.
There were reasons to believe that the Yankee Stadium could be uniformly divided. Even anyway. However, Yankees fans came to be in the match on Friday evening, Mets fans could not have traveled much further. And yet, Soto’s reception left no doubt what fanbase dominated the crowd of 47,400 people. They hooked it with each bat. As he ran towards the right field at the bottom of the first, the whole section of the seats turned his back on him. When they turned around, it was to throw blasphemies. Soto met their fingers in the middle with an ironic salvation.
As for jerseys n ° 22 bought when he was one of their own, some Yankees fans made their own modifications – one added a word to four letters of choice griffon on a strip at the top of the signage plate, another wrote “Arroz” on the number, a wink to the most recent Yankee No 22, Ben Rice.
At one point, Soto threw a bullet into the stands while jogging the field at the end of a half-manch in defense. The fans of the Yankees around there have rui of Aminas when the one who caught it rejected it rather than savoring a memory tainted by an ex.
“It’s New York, that’s what you register,” said Clay Holmes before the noisy atmosphere. A relief from the stars with the Yankees, also went to a borough during the offseason. He signed with the dishes, who have since transformed it into a capable starter. “This is what you want. You can feel the energy, the buzz. It’s much more fun to stand in the park. ”
To underline that this is a confrontation of real baseball titans, we must say that the Yankees, despised by Soto, did not continue to wallow the offseason. The money that could have gone to a single young supernatural star on the bias was rather used to connect holes around the list with additions from List B of baseball: the left-handed launcher Max Fried, the closest Devin Williams and some former Post-Pic MVP in Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger. Fried, in particular, turned out to be essential and ascending – it currently has the lowest era of baseball, in particular necessary on a rivalized Yankee club which has lost the winner of the Cy Young Award Gerrit Cole for the season and has so far been without replacement worthy of Cole last year and the prevailing recruit of the year, Luis Gil.
Cohen, despite all its generosity, would never have arisen for Fried, whose eight -year contract of $ 218 million is the biggest ever for a left -hander. Under the new director general David Stearns, the philosophy of the dishes favored follies on position players and finding value on the margins in terms of pitching. The converted Holmes, for example.
It is therefore ironic that the Yankees, who lost a player most often compared to Ted Williams, started the season with perhaps the strongest offensive in sport. And the dishes, which avoided high -end starters for the budget for a thickness of $ 700 million, have the best starting rotation era.
In the end, the Yankees bats have mastered the pitching of the food in a 6-2 beat which is almost exciting in the ninth round before Soto gets up with the loaded bases. This sent fans of the Yankees who hooked him home, but it elected the day otherwise perfectly acceptable he had marble: three walks, a stolen base, a marked race.
In the series of the Subway series, the two parties were questioned about the alleged imminent huts which would specifically rail Soto. That is to say that it was not a surprise.
“I was ready for that,” said Soto after the match, confirming that it was probably the strongest that he was ever in his career. “You have to kiss her at the end of the day.”
If his new union with the dishes takes place as the two parties hope, the Yankees will be the last team that Soto will leave on poor terms. The dynamics added spices to a rivalry that heated anyway. The era of the essential metro series has just started.
