By Game Three of the World Series, I realized that I had turned the Fall Classic into a receptacle for all the dread and disgust that the election to follow a week later inspired. It’s a well-observed cliché that elections resemble pro sports, sharing the qualities of exhaustive statistical analysis, relentless punditry, advertising rushes aimed at the homeowning middle class, spectacular expenditures, mass elation, mass disappointment, mass rage, and, occasionally, mass violence. Plus, where the election had Nate Silver, the World Series had Steph Furry, “The Sports Predicting, Trickshot Making Corgi,” who headbutts a plastic blow-up basketball into one of two plastic hoops bearing printout logos of the teams to play. (Interestingly, Silver called it right this time; the dog was a bit off, having predicted a Dodgers victory in six—it only took five.)
Unfortunately, my strategy of projection didn’t work. The tragicomic farce of the Yankees bringing out Fat Joe for a mirthless pregame show did little to blunt the equally tragicomic and far more consequential farce of the Harris campaign bringing out Liz and Dick Cheney. And why would it? The stadium crowd, for all its power, is a temporary fixture, dissipating once the game is done or the sports bar closes, at least until next season. “All the fragments of the afternoon collect,” wrote DeLillo in Underworld, “shouts, bat-cracks, full bladders and stray yawns, the sand-grain manyness of things that can’t be counted,” only to fall “indelibly into the past.”
Still, unlike both political parties, neither the Yankees nor the Dodgers, for all the pain they’ve inflicted on myself and others, are responsible for our country’s continued descent into fascism, bankrolling of genocide, and wanton destruction of the earth. And we certainly can’t blame the Mets.
Broken records
Major records were being broken before the season even started. Last December, baby-faced superstar and multiyear AL MVP Shohei Ohtani skipped out on the Los Angeles Angels and signed a $700 million ten-year deal with the Dodgers, the largest in sports history, despite the deferral of $680 million of that sum for the decade.1 In March, Ohtani’s interpreter was busted on federal gambling charges. Officially, the interpreter embezzled millions from his client and the Japanese superstar has no connection to sports betting whatsoever, but the chants of “Where’s your bookie!” heard this fall would suggest that many fans (or haters) believe otherwise. Ohtani would go on to become the inaugural member of baseball’s 50–50 club, hitting 53 home runs and stealing 55 bases throughout the season. The ball subjected to Ohtani’s 50th homer would sell at auction for $4.392 million—also a record—despite an ongoing lawsuit over who grabbed it first. Litigation does not a mystery make, and it seems unlikely that this particular ball will inspire any postmodern masterpieces.
One might think that like just about everything except real wages, the numbers in baseball will just go up and up. Not quite so. Another, sadder record was broken this year too, as the Chicago White Sox beat out the ’62 Mets to become the worst team in modern baseball history, tallying 121 losses to only 41 wins. This nonachievement was followed in short order by a letterhead apology posted by Sox owner and notorious cheapskate Jerry Reinsdorf, eerily reminiscent of Biden’s dropout announcement. Rumors quickly began circulating that the pathetic Sox might even move to Nashville, though cooler heads were quick to point out that these rumors are likely being spread by Reinsdorf himself as he prepares to negotiate a new ballpark lease with the city of Chicago.
The shifting geography of baseball is not unlike glacial drift: most tremors are insignificant, but occasionally mountainsides do get razed. 2024 marks the end for the Oakland Athletics, whose half-finalized move to Vegas marks the end of the “big-league city” that once housed the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and the NHL’s short-lived and little-remembered California Golden Seals. That postwar sports golden age beneath the Golden Gate will now give way to the Golden Nugget, as a team with history, character, even verve is slated to become yet another sad casino attraction. The final home games ended with fans tearing the seats from the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum’s concrete floors and “Oakland” officially excised from the franchise name. The placeless Athletics will be warehoused in a minor league stadium in Sacramento for the next couple of years before they follow the Raiders eastward, assuming their new stadium deal doesn’t fall through first.
LGM
As baseball trudged through the spring and into the summer, the MLB repeated one of their stranger and sadder gimmicks of recent years: the London Series. Unlike the eminently sensible schedule of preseason hockey games in Eastern Europe, this bid to corner what officials bizarrely describe as a “key growth market” seems to be based solely on the observation that Londoners are “big event-goers.” If nothing else, it’s a nice gesture for oddities like Belgian Mets diehards, who showed up in force (two of them).
The two-game Mets-Phillies showdown in London ended in a tie, 7–2 Phillies and 6–5 Mets. That the Mets could eke this out at all might have been surprising earlier in the year. With a dismal start to the season characterized by low-attendance losses, they had the makings of a team that wouldn’t even be close enough to smell the playoffs. Reliever Jorge López was DFA’d for publicly calling the Mets the worst team in the MLB, a grievance-airing all the more hurtful for its plausible claim to the truth. Then, Grimace. The Mets entered Pride Month with gusto, spraying rainbows all over their graphics, and on June 12 brought out the McDonald’s mascot to throw the first pitch. Behind the team’s new hunger for weird bits (Hawk Tuah Girl Haliey Welch would throw the first pitch later in the summer) was a genuine hunger for winning too, or at least playing good ball, after shortstop Francisco Lindor convened a players-only meeting in the wake of a sweep (by the Dodgers) in which the team resolved to “[hold] each other accountable.”
If the reinvigorated Mets fought hard, they also caught break after break: southern thunderstorms and statistical coincidences in league standings led to a postponed (and eventually tied) doubleheader against the Braves after the end of the regular season, which advanced both teams to the Wild Card round while sending the Arizona Diamondbacks back to their adobe houses till spring training. Pete Alonso’s magnificent homer pulled a win out from under the Brewers, vaulting the Mets out of the Wild Card and into the Division Series. And the Phillies, a postseason favorite for the past half decade, came apart at the seams when they realized they could indeed lose to the Mets, a possibility they had evidently failed to consider. But taking a good hand from fate and hitting it out the park is, like mixing metaphors, what baseball is all about.
A Bronx tale
Northwest of Citi Field, a relatively strong early-season performance by the Yankees gave way to a middling showing through mid-summer, but by late August the team was comfortably on their way to a playoff berth. Unfortunately, and here one can’t help but invoke the election again, it was the kind of regular season which, in retrospect, contained all the signs of what was to come. But the Yankees, like certain presidential campaigns, were unwilling to address these flaws in their basic play, if they ever saw them at all.
The 2024 New York Yankees were truly a team of stars, even more so than the Dodgers. Team captain Aaron Judge led the league in home runs. (The only thing that stopped him from crushing his own record this year was the self-inflicted Paw Patrol Curse, in which a cameo appearance on the eponymous fascistic cartoon led to several hitless late-season weeks.) The lumbering designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton continued to prove himself essential with dinger after dinger, despite being quite possibly the slowest runner alive. Absent on injury leave for most of the season, Gerrit Cole somehow remained the best pitcher in the league. And then of course there’s Juan Soto. The 26-year-old Dominican prodigy, the driving force behind the Washington Nationals’ 2019 upset World Series victory, was picked up on a trade from the San Diego Padres with a year of his contract left before free agency. Adding Soto, a competent fielder but a truly remarkable batsman, to the mix made the Yankees a team of power hitters to an obscene, even irrational degree—perhaps it was this that blinded them to their abysmal baserunning and fielding.
Midway through the season the Yankees acquired Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the Marlins, adding another star batter to the lineup and giving the team a vital charisma boost. (Sporting a chain around his neck and a ski mask beneath his batting helmet during the chillier nights of the American League Championship Series, Jazz was easily the best-looking player on the diamond.) Surprising elements of the pitching staff distinguished themselves, particularly two relievers, the diminutive Luke Weaver and the mustachioed Tim Hill, a 19th-century man straight out of Cooperstown. Of course, the roster had its problems too. Top prospect Anthony Volpe spent most of the summer in a deep slump despite winning the Gold Glove Award in his rookie season the previous year. First baseman Anthony Rizzo, still reeling from a serious concussion, struggled all season, even before a bad pitch from the Pirates’ Ryan Borucki broke two of his fingers in the second-to-last game of the season. Perhaps most illustrative of all, the unfairly despised ex–Red Sock Alex Verdugo discovered in July that he’s allergic to cobalt, a primary ingredient in batting gloves—and his tattoos. Till then he had been wrapping his swollen, aching hands in gauze each time he came up to hit, with predictable results.
The atmosphere throughout the regular season reflected the Yankees’ slightly schizoid vibe, especially as September rolled around and the team eased ahead in the league standings. Up in the Bronx, I saw the Yankees lose to the mediocre St. Louis Cardinals (6–5) and saw them demolish the much more competitive Orioles (10–1). I won’t pretend I was so locked in as to notice what the Dodgers’ scouts noticed, that beneath their batting averages the Yankees were perhaps the worst baserunners in the league, but looking back I see it. As was pointed out after the dust settled, the Yankees held a phenomenal 31–9 record against the mediocre teams of the AL Central: the Guardians, the Royals, the Tigers, the Twins, and the failing White Sox. At 71–65 against everyone else, they hardly broke even. But the postseason rolled around and the Yankees’ usual foes flopped all on their own: the Houston Astros went down 2–0 to the Tigers, and the Orioles were similarly trounced by the Royals. The Royals themselves never really had a chance against the Yankees in the Division Series, Bobby Witt Jr. notwithstanding. Something closer to a genuine nailbiter transpired between the Tigers and the Guardians, the latter ultimately winning 3–2 and advancing to the ALCS. The ALCS was exciting: gaffes and big hits abounded on both sides. Jhonkensy “Big Christmas” Noel’s two-run homer in Game Three helped Cleveland push it to five games, keeping the dream of “Believeland” alive for one more night; Juan Soto’s two-run homer in Game Five snuffed that dream out. Ultimately, however, the AL postseason ended more or less how it was expected to, with the greedy execs impatiently waiting for the Mets to get out of the way and make room for the Ohtani-Judge face-off they’d been conjuring for months.
The hate within
In the National League, a vicious Division Series almost stopped the Dodgers in their tracks. Their actual Southern California rival, the Padres, fought them to the brink of elimination before the Dodgers rallied with not one but two shutout games. The series was ugly on and off the diamond: a spectacular catch from Jurickson Profar, followed by Dodgers fans pelting the outfielder with balls and trash; some pretty dubious baserunning from Manny Machado; a near-brawl between Machado and Jack Flaherty; several actual brawls outside Dodger Stadium.
The Day of the Locust vibes out west was certainly matched by the crowd at Citizens Bank Park, where the Mets arrived to play the heavily favored Phillies. Contra their brother-loving reputation, Phillies fans spent most of Games One and Two—an improbable win and a very close loss for the Mets, respectively—booing their own players each time they came up to bat. Back at Citi Field, the Mets blew them out 7–2 in Game Four, and Lindor’s Game Five grand slam put an end to an illusory one-run Phillies lead and, with it, “Red October.” By this point Mets fans were getting positively orgiastic; each time Lindor walked up to plate to the tune of “My Girl,” the whole stadium would finish the refrain. Grimace became an unfortunate fixture on the 7 train (it’s purple, you see).
The Dodgers pumped the brakes on all the excitement with a brutal 9–0 Game One shutout, further racking up LA’s record-setting number of scoreless innings this postseason. Reality began to set in. This was, after all, the Mets. But to basically everyone’s surprise a leadoff Lindor homer and a Vientos grand slam carried the Mets to victory during their second night in LA.
Game Three of the NLCS, the first in Queens, was the only postseason game I attended. The lucky recipient of occasional pooled season tickets to both New York teams, courtesy of a family connection, I (a Yankees fan) was just grateful the Mets had lasted this long. I wanted to see some postseason ball, I wanted a subway series, and I wanted the Mets fans in my life to be happy. Raised a baseball agnostic (though an occasional Nationals watcher), I can’t muster the bile to truly hate a crosstown rival—baseball is in this sense the obverse of religion, the converted and confirmed never quite as militant as the born and baptized. And amid all the excitement of the first league championships featuring both New York teams since Clinton was president, it became harder and harder to differentiate where exactly the good vibes were coming from. All to say: if Citi Field was riding high, so was I.
Arriving a little late, I just missed the pregame fireworks, though I saw their gleam over the grandstands as I walked down the ungainly wooden ramp from the Willets Point subway station. Between the complimentary towel I was handed on the way in and the blue-and-orange windbreaker I’d thrown on, I was feeling the buzz—even the eye-wateringly upcharged postseason beer, a whopping $17.99 per, couldn’t sour my mood. (Regular season Citi Field beer is solidly middle of the pack as far as ballparks go, at $6.99 for 12 ounces of Blue Moon.) Luis Severino got through the first inning without allowing the Dodgers any runs, but things began deteriorating fast at the top of the second. Dodgers catcher Will Smith hit a single to score the gnomish Max Muncy, who the Mets walked like a rambunctious dog, seemingly incapable of striking him out in plate appearance after plate appearance. After that unfurled the most excruciating seven and a half innings of my life. Again and again the Mets would load the bases, only to strike out without a single run earned. Again and again Severino, then Reed Garret, then Tylor Megill, would walk Dodger after Dodger, loading the bases for them too, but unlike the Mets the Dodgers capitalized on these repeated pitching flops—Kiké Hernandez hit a two-run homer, Ohtani hit a three-run homer, even Muncy got a homer of his own. By the seventh inning Mets fans were streaming out, abandoning the frigid night and flailing team for their warm cars and the comforting hum of the Whitestone Expressway. On the train home, long after midnight and many hours without a single run to cheer for, a drunken Mets fan asked why there were so many Dodgers fans on our car. Because they were the only people willing to stay to the end, answered the gloating Angelenos.
The Game Four loss was slightly less painful, 10–2 being a better way to go out than 8–0, philosophically speaking. Everyone settled in for the Mets to lose Game Five and the natural order of things to return. (When fans had turned tail the night before, a middle-aged man behind me noted, “It’s like they’ve never been to a Mets game before.”) But the whiplash wasn’t through yet, as a yet another game-making home run from the “Polar Bear” Pete Alonso (so nicknamed for his ursine physiognomy) lifted the Mets to a 12–6 revival. On Sunday night I nervously sat down at home to watch Game Six, now back in LA, crossfaded off of Mets comeback jitters and the satisfaction of back-to-back Yankee wins the nights before. An early 1–0 lead didn’t even last the inning. The last few innings were torture, and I was frankly relieved each time they cut for commercials.
Though they lost in predictably grueling fashion, with catcher (and postseason bumbler–turned-key-player) Francisco Álvarez leaving the dugout in tears, the ’24 Mets were indeed special, and we almost certainly haven’t heard the last of the team’s current incarnation. (All the more so since Steve Cohen successfully poached Soto from the Yankees.) Still, it’s weird to see. The Mets and their fans have a certain nobility in losing and look much better doing it than their crosstown rivals. The upshot, however, is that when the Mets start winning it isn’t all family-friendly joy. Mets fans have an ugly side that rarely gets a chance to rear its head—don’t forget, these are the same people that root for the Islanders.
New York, New York
In the five-day interim between the NLCS and Game One of the World Series, the first Yankees–Dodgers matchup since 1988, things felt big. Things felt possible. Big things felt possible. Incessant MLB ads crosscutting between Ohtani and Judge suggested that a world-historical clash was imminent; certain memers reached for the analogy of Hitler versus Stalin.
The two teams were neck and neck for much of Game One, with no runs on either side for the first four innings. The Dodgers eked out a run in the fifth, but a Stanton two-run homer in the sixth put the Yankees back in the lead. A fielding error from the Yankees’ Gleyber Torres in the eighth helped Ohtani tie the game. The ninth passed by, scoreless, heightening my anxiety and my displeasure at the fact that I was a bar with no TV. Checking the improbably functional MLB app on line for the bathroom, I breathed a half-sigh of relief to see that Jazz had scored and put the Yankees in the lead. Later, I was glad I missed what happened next; as upsetting as it was to learn through the app, it would’ve been worse to watch live. With two Dodgers on the bases, Yankees coach Aaron Boone pulled Jake Cousins from the mound and replaced him with Nestor Cortés, who, following an injury, hadn’t pitched in thirty-five days. Ohtani fouled his first pitch, which Verdugo caught in a spectacular half-dive into the stands, a la Jeter ’04. Unfortunately, not being the final out, Verdugo’s out-of-bounds catch also triggered an obscure rule and walked the batters on first and second. Fearing the worst, the Yankees intentionally walked Mookie Betts. Then, with the bases loaded, two outs, and the Yankees clinging to a tenuous one-run lead, Cortés threw a wet rag of a pitch to Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, who snapped it into the stands and delivered the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history. The final score: 6–3.
Freeman is the Dodgers’ royal we. His videogame-avatar crew cut, pentagonal jawline, and porcelain veneers offer a near-perfect synecdoche of the team and its aura. Any future history of the Dodgers will have to grapple with the enigma that Freddie Freeman represents: how can a team this good, with players this good, with game this good, have so little collective swagger? Ohtani, while stony, is both talented and just plain large enough to transform his babyface into a sphinxlike mien. Betts, smile and head always cocked at exactly the right angles, somehow makes the stupid dance the Dodgers do after scoring look good. Both Hernándezes are charmers too. Even the detestable Will Smith is at least distinctive, but in Dodger blue and white they all fade back into Freddie Freeman, who is probably one of the most gifted five or six players in the game but is about as memorable as a minor league backbencher. The Dodgers are the best team in baseball, and they’re also boring. The Yankees, for their part, remain straitjacketed by Steinbrenner’s refusal to lift restrictions against sub-chin facial hair dating back to the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. They’re forced to look like that; the Dodgers do it by choice.
But they won. Game Two was classic Yankees postseason fare—“like passing a kidney stone,” in the words of Desus Nice. Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched close to perfect, and even Soto scoring twice couldn’t revive the visibly demoralized Yankees, who continued to load the bases only to blow it. Ohtani did dislocate his shoulder stealing a base, but not badly enough to sit out the rest of the series. To watch the game, I made the mistake of stopping by my neighborhood sports bar. Alas, Saturday, October 26th, had the misfortune of being Halloweekend, and the warren of firefighters, cheap bear, and political reaction I visit to watch sports had been overtaken by costumed jacquerie. An elderly Rangers fan, drunk on Budweiser and a frankly unimpressive victory over the low-scoring Anaheim Ducks, accidentally took my cash tip intended for the bartender and shoved it into the pile of loose bills under his own half-finished beer, but by the time I realized what had happened it was too late to say anything. This felt like a confused but fitting metaphor.
Somehow Game Three was even worse. Freeman homered in the top of the first, setting the tone from thereon out. The Yankees are bad losers, and they came undone in particularly shameful fashion in their first home game of the series. By the time Verdugo hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth no one seemed to really care, with Torres grounding out immediately after to end the game and cap off a dismal night for New York.
I returned to the neighborhood bar (now nearly empty) for Game Four fully prepared for disaster, ruin, and despair. The Yankees were a game away elimination and had been so lackluster thus far that a sweep seemed not just possible, but probable. On the other hand, the depleted Dodgers were in the uncomfortable position of playing a bullpen game against an opponent who could outhit them, if nothing else—and soon enough the tables began to turn. Despite Freeman hitting another two-run home run in the top of the first, in an eerie repetition befitting his own robotic nature, the Yankees finally managed to turn runners on base into runs scored; Volpe, after an unfortunate but ultimately inconsequential gaffe, scored off a Verdugo groundout, restored self-confidence beaming on his cherubic face. One inning later, that selfsame angel hit a grand slam off Daniel Hudson and catapulted the Yankees into the lead. In his own words, “[he] blacked out.” The bottom (and dregs) of the Yankees lineup continued to shine for the rest of the night, with catcher Austin Wells homering, Volpe dashing it home again, and Torres driving in a three-run home run. Even Judge singled to score Verdugo in what seemed like the first contact his bat had made with the ball in weeks.
As the neighborhood bar played “New York, New York” (they do this for every Yankees win), the air felt electric. This was the team we came to watch, and while we weren’t sure exactly where they’d been the last week, we were happy to have them back. The final score of 11–4 lent a rosy sheen to what was, in truth, a night of ghastly behavior at Yankee Stadium. Mookie Betts, leaping to catch a foul ball from Torres, was grabbed from behind by two season-ticket holders, who, in full view of the stadium, the cameras, and the world, gripped his wrist and pried the ball out of his glove. Though the fans were ejected from the game, they were told they’d be allowed back the following night and were soon seen taking pictures with admirers on the nearby 161st Street platform. Outcry—though not from the cool-headed Betts—soon made the Yankees reverse course, banning the fans in question from Game Five and donating their seats to a pediatric cancer patient. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that during the Stand Up to Cancer moment of silence one could very clearly hear other fans screaming “You suck, Freeman!” (Freeman’s mother died of cancer.)
A 3–0 comeback in the World Series has never been done. (Even in the league championships its only happened once, during the famous 2004 Red Sox upset victory over the Yankees.) In fact, a team down 3–0 in the World Series has never even forced a sixth game. This didn’t prevent certain delusions of grandeur from swirling, with Jazz telling reporters, “One thing about us, we love history. And we love to make history.” Out to dinner in Manhattan, I emerged to learn that Judge had hit his first home run of the series, scoring Soto on first, and immediately followed by homer from Jazz; all of these off of Jack Flaherty, one of the Dodgers’ more dangerous arms. An inning later Volpe scored Verdugo and Flaherty retired from the field. Stanton homered off of his replacement, Ryan Brasier, in his very first at-bat of the evening.
I arrived at the neighborhood bar in a fugue state, ready to believe that it could happen. The neighbors seemed to think so too, packing the house for the first time since the Halloweekend before, thankfully in civilian clothes this time. Then the storm of shit began. Kiké Hernandez sent a fly ball to center field, the kind of hit any middle schooler—even me—could catch. It seemed like Judge had it (how could he not?) and the bar erupted into applause; we choked on our cheers, however, when we realized that Number 99 had dropped it. Volpe then fumbled a throw to Jazz, letting Kiké through to third base. Gerrit Cole, nearly one hundred pitches deep, proceeded to heroically strike out both Ohtani and Gavin Lux, but then committed perhaps the worst error of all when a groundball from Betts rolled into Rizzo’s glove. A misleading half-jog from the pitcher in his direction kept Rizzo stock still while the nimbler Betts cruised past them both to the bag. The Dodgers only got a single run from that particular play, but the game was over. The Yankees continued to get hits and load the bases, but their pitching and fielding never recovered. The team finally pulled the visibly exhausted Cole, only for Weaver to let not one but two sacrifice flies through, giving the Dodgers the lead. By the time the Dodgers pulled QAnoner Blake Treinen for starting pitcher Walker Buehler, the Yankees seemed pretty much done for anyways. Buehler, a regular-season underperformer, pitched a perfect inning, striking out Verdugo for the final out.2 “Better luck next year,” said one of the regulars standing in the doorway of the neighborhood bar. “That’s all we can hope for, isn’t it.”
Till death
One of the great ironies of the 2024 postseason was that while the MLB got exactly what it wanted—a bicoastal showdown and the most-watched World Series in years—the two superstars chosen to personify it receded into the background. Judge had a bad postseason, even before his mistake—already derided as a “Bill Buckner–level error”—cost him a great deal of public goodwill, if not necessarily the game. Judge’s batting average was well below usual, and though a direct hit to the ribs during the ALCS might explain why the best hitter in the league could barely connect, it won’t save him from being dubbed Mr. April II. The real tragedy is the timing, the fumble coming just as Judge seemed to pull out of the morass that had trailed him since Cleveland; after Game Five, wearing a heavy frown above his flannel jacket, Judge told reporters that “falling short in the World Series will stick with me till the day I die.”
And yet in the postseason Judge led Ohtani in every stat except hits (close) and stolen bases (not in the slightest). In fact, the Yankees as a team outperformed the Dodgers by several key metrics (like home runs) and were near-tied in many others (like total runs). But the one area where the Yankees unambiguously dominated was errors. A sloppy team of stars, they were particularly unsuited to play the Dodgers, a disciplined unit who demonstrated their ability to play equally well with or without their big hitters or elite pitchers. The Dodgers are, as they say, a team, not a club; the Yankees are a warehouse for the future Hall of Fame. If this can in large part be blamed on coaching strategy, it doesn’t seem like much will change on that front; bringing back Aaron Boone was one of the very first off-season decisions the Yankees front office made. Boone has the loyalty of his players, the ear of General Manager Brian Cashman, and the favor of Steinbrenner; he’s not going anywhere. And as the Yankees know all too well, the fans aren’t going anywhere either, trophies or not.
The bigger concern for me is less the Yankees’ failed strategy than the Dodgers’ extremely successful one, which seems capable of producing a dominant playoff team for years to come. LA seems set to sign “monster” Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki, further concentrating talent from the second-biggest baseball market on one American team. (At least the Yankees resigned Cole after a bizarre game of contract chicken, in which the pitcher opted out only to re-sign the exact same contract less than a week later.) Throughout a dreary November, as the World Series was followed by much grimmer and more disquieting developments, I hoped the Yankees could cling to Soto on the selfish principle that if we’re going to have one superstar team we might as well have two. It was not to be. In early December Soto officially inked a deal with the Mets, after a painfully protracted negotiation process and rumor mill. Amidst the furor and celebration, separating insight from obfuscation became harder than ever; does Soto really believe more in the Mets’ future, or did he just want that extra couple million? (Negotiations with the Yankees stalled at a $760 million offer for sixteen years.) Soto is a generational talent and I’m glad I’ll still get to watch him play, but I don’t think he’s the solution to the Mets’ fundamental problems—a grossly uneven batting lineup and a dearth of ace pitchers—especially if Pete Alonso walks. But maybe that’s just cope.
Blue Man Group
The night after their victory, Dodgers fans rioted. Brandishing flags, caps, and in one shirtless case a coat of all-blue body paint, the fans occupied intersections in Downtown and East LA, did donuts in the street, shot off fireworks, looted a Nike store, and eventually set fire to a city bus. All the usual suspects cried foul, carefully eliding the true sequence of events, in which the LAPD’s tactical alert preceded the arson by several hours; this was, really, a cop riot. But the misguided militancy of a bunch of baseball fans is some cause for perverse optimism. When the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series in the depths of that first Covid fall there were no spectators and no victory parade, but only a few months earlier everyone was in the streets, those riotous first few weeks of summer outmatching the atmosphere of any game night for elation, despair, and possibility, not just in LA or New York but every city across the country. The 2024 World Series may not have given me much more hope for the future than the election (which gave me none at all), but, however obliquely, the streets just might.
This record has already been overturned by Juan Soto’s more straightforward and much more lavish $765 million fifteen-year deal with the Mets inked this December. Soto will be making at least $40 million each year, plus significant bonuses for signing, winning MVP and other awards, and a suite at Citi Field for his entire extended family (an allegedly crucial part of the offer the Yankees were unwilling to match, thanks to longstanding club policy that, when it comes to tickets, even All-Stars and their entourages must pay their way). ↩
A former Dodger too, Verdugo earned the ire of his ex-colleagues by declaring—not entirely wrongly—that their 2020 World Series victory didn’t quite count, coming off the heels of a season truncated by Covid and played entirely in neutral ballparks. ↩
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