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<\/a>In a portent of what was to come, Juan Soto (on the right) last season with now-teammate Mets great Francisco Linder on the left.<\/p><\/div>\n
A few months ago, while watching football, I observed to Mr. X, \u201cSomeone\u2019s always miserable in sports.\u201d And this time, it\u2019s us<\/em>!<\/p>\n Juan Soto went from this in 2024…<\/p><\/div>\n …to this in 2025. And Mets fans must be in heaven!<\/p><\/div>\n But, even though I\u2019m a fan of both<\/em> New York baseball teams, (I grew up loving the Mets because my father did, and then became a mad Yankees fan at age twenty because of my then-boyfriend,) I still think he\u2019s making a big mistake to leave the Yankees for the Mets. Yes, he is<\/em> getting a lot more with the move to Queens\u2014at $765 million for fifteen years, it\u2019s an extra five mil and a one year shorter contract than what the Yanks were offering, along with what appears to the dealmaker\u2014a free VIP suite! The Mets agreed to that request, while the Yankees owner said that none of his other star players have ever gotten a free suite, so he\u2019s not going to start bestowing it now. But I just don\u2019t feel like the Mets will get further than they did in this amazing 2024 post-season that they had, even with Soto. And I always feel that the Yanks can at least make the World Series, as they did this year, if not finally win it all again. They\u2019re the storied New York Yankees, for goodness sake!<\/p>\n Soto was soooo happy this past season, to be paired with Yankees Captain Aaron Judge and co-star Giancarlo Stanton. And he appeared to be having a heck of a good time with his fellow Spanish-speakers on the team. He was always smiling and laughing and performing all their secret handshakes as the season progressed. He definitely helped them to be the top team in the American League. And he looked as though he was having the time of his life doing so. (I\u2019ve seen him happily play for the Washington Nationals and San Diego Padres before, but this season seemed very different.)<\/p>\n Yankees teammates Juan Soto and Aaron Judge doing one of their complicated handshakes.<\/p><\/div>\n I do<\/em> understand that as a poor kid growing up in the Dominican Republic, making boatloads of money for all of your hard work is a big motivating factor for all of his professional decisions. But isn\u2019t there a limit to the financial gains? Doesn\u2019t the amount of happiness an activity brings you factor in? I\u2019m not saying that Juan will have less of a good time with the Mets than he did with the Yanks. I\u2019m really hoping it works out for him, and it probably will\u2014those Mets seem like a crazy fun group of guys. But the sheer joy I witnessed during his games this past season made me think he would opt to stay with those<\/em> teammates for a long time to come.<\/p>\n And this is when yours truly was in heaven this past season!<\/p><\/div>\n Juan Soto is now twenty-six, (although you never really<\/em> know the age of Dominican athletes\u2014their birth certificates are often fudged to make them younger,) so a fifteen-year contract would take him up to when he\u2019s forty-one. At that point, he\u2019ll most likely have either retired or just be a shadow of the player his younger self is today. So the whole contract is a tad weird to me.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>