For Mets fans, signing Juan Soto away from the Yankees is extra special

DALLAS — This is how you reshape a reputation. This is how you reimagine a franchise. This is how you deliver for your fans.

On Sunday evening, the Mets signed Juan Soto to the largest contract in professional sports history—a 15-year, $765 million deal, according to sources familiar with the terms, shattering the previous baseball record by over $300 million.https://wordpress.com/

It’s a moment that Mets fans will remember—a rare one for a fanbase accustomed to such moments unfolding in a less celebratory light.

Before diving into the implications for the lineup, payroll projections through 2039, or the aging curve of the roster, Mets fans should take a moment to enjoy this victory. Let yourselves savor it. It hasn’t happened often enough.

It’s not just that a franchise, which spent over a decade struggling with financial constraints, has now become the powerhouse it always had the potential to be. It’s not just that they made a bold, massive investment in a player who could very well live up to the promise of his new deal. It’s not even just that this player joins a team fresh off a rejuvenating season that fell just short of a pennant.

What makes this so significant for Mets fans is undeniable: They beat the Yankees to sign a player they coveted. The very player the Yankees had, and hoped to bring back, chose Queens over the Bronx. It’s not just the signing, but the meaning behind it, as President of Baseball Operations David Stearns pointed out when reflecting on last season’s playoff berth secured in Atlanta. For Mets fans, it’s about exorcising old demons—and now, it’s about watching those Yankees fans, once smug, experience the flip side.

For too long, the Mets have been defined by what they weren’t. When they arrived in New York in 1962, they weren’t the Dodgers or the Giants. They never became the perennial powerhouse that the Yankees have been for over a century. They’ve long been seen as the “little brother” in the city.

Consider the experience of a Mets fan under 40—just too young to remember a championship or the full thrill of the 1980s. As a child, you sat in classrooms surrounded by Yankees fans, some of whom were lifelong devotees, others just hopping on the bandwagon, flaunting their dynasty. You grew up with interleague play and the Subway Series every summer, where three games felt like a referendum on your entire existence. You held on to those fleeting moments of triumph—Dave Mlicki’s shutout, Matt Franco against Mariano Rivera, that inexplicable home-and-home sweep in 2013—as precious memories, sometimes literally saved in a shoebox (maybe that scorecard from the 9-8 win in ‘99 is still tucked away in your childhood closet).

To outbid the Yankees for a prime Yankees player like Soto seemed unimaginable—even before the Mets’ financial struggles with Bernie Madoff, and even before the team signed players like Frank Francisco and Wilson Ramos, hoping for a quick fix.

And for even the most hardened cynic—there’s no shortage of them among Mets fans—Steve Cohen has exceeded the expectations that followed his purchase of the team over four years ago. He promised to change the franchise’s narrative, and when it counted most this winter, he had built enough of a reputation to win over Soto. Cohen achieved this by investing at the highest levels, even when those investments didn’t yield immediate results, by disregarding the luxury tax threshold, and by not adhering to the rigid payroll discipline imposed by Hal Steinbrenner across town.

“You can’t change the perception without changing the reality,” Sandy Alderson remarked the day Cohen was introduced as the owner.

Now, four years later, the Mets’ reality has indeed transformed. It’s surreal, even. This is the new identity of the Mets.