The Mets and Yankees are both in first place. Juan Soto is returning the Bronx. Aaron Judge is still there. New York baseball is about to get ramped up with the most anticipated Subway Series in years. Still, attention will be divided on Friday.
About 46,000 fans are expected to fill Yankee Stadium for the annual, regular-season, intracity baseball clash, where fans trade chants and barbs in support of their respective teams. But don’t be surprised to hear cheering at odd moments, too, or to see people in the stands staring down at their phones during key pitches.
A few miles to the south, the Knicks will be playing an even more important game. They will host the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of their second-round N.B.A. playoff series, with a chance to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000, making New York City the center of a Friday night sports extravaganza.
It starts at 7:05 p.m. in the Bronx, where the Yankees, who lead the American League East division with a 25-18 record, host the Mets, who lead the National League East with a 28-16 mark. It could be a preview of the 2025 World Series, but there are four months of baseball left to determine that. And just to highlight any possible celestial powers at play, the only time the Yankees and Mets played in the World Series was in 2000, the year the Knicks last advanced to the conference finals.
There was also a time last year when another October Subway Series seemed possible, if not likely. That was until the Los Angeles Dodgers intruded to trash the dreams of both teams by beating the Mets in the National League Championship Series and the Yankees in the World Series.
What happened next, though, will shape the New York baseball rivalry for years to come. In a shocking offseason move, Soto left the Yankees and joined the Mets in free agency. Steve Cohen, the multibillionaire owner of the Mets, gave Soto a staggering contract worth $765 million over 15 years, leaving the Yankees and their fans shocked. It isn’t supposed to work that way.
In the six-plus decades that both teams have shared New York, the Yankees were always the older, more established, successful, glamorous older sibling. The Mets made occasional noise in Queens, but if there was a top player on the market, the Yankees would almost always get him. Soto and Cohen changed that, and on Friday night Yankee fans will get their first chance to welcome him back, in whatever manner they choose (don’t expect flowers).
“It’s going to be 50,000 against one,” Soto told Jon Heyman of The New York Post. Actually, when these teams play in the regular season, the stadiums — both Yankee Stadium and Citi Field — tend to be divided. But expect a large majority of Yankee fans to root passionately against Soto, less than a year after they fawned over him.
The last time Soto was at Yankee Stadium was after Game 5 of the World Series in October. With his Yankee cap screwed on backward in the clubhouse, Soto chuckled when a reporter asked him after the loss if Yankee fans chanting for him to stay would influence his decision.
“It will probably impact the decision of the ownership,” he said.
The Yankees heard those cheers and did make a strong offer of about $760 million for 16 years. But unlike so many of the great players of the past, he left the Yankees. He had one really good year there in which he hit 41 home runs and scored 128 runs, and formed a dynamic slugging partnership with Judge that reminded some of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Soto ended that dance, so the Yankees took the money they saved and spread it around, primarily to three other players: the pitcher Max Fried and the position players Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt.
Most important, they still have Judge, the best hitter in baseball. That is a decent consolation. Judge leads all players in batting average (. 412) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (1.279), and is tied in home runs with 15. Soto has eight home runs and is batting .255.
If he could hit a couple of three-pointers and help the Knicks win, he would unite the city.
David Waldstein is a Times reporter who writes about the New York region, with an emphasis on sports.
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