If you were to calculate the cocktail of caustic fury properly, and precisely, it would probably look something like this:
- Three parts Shea Stadium, October 1973, for the entirety of the 2 ½ games after Pete Rose wrestle-rolled in the infield dirt with Buddy Harrelson.
- Two parts Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, Dec. 2, 2010, the night LeBron James returned in a Miami Heat uniform to face Cavaliers fans who’d spent the better part of the previous five months burning his jersey and removing his mural from tall buildings.
- One part Madison Square Garden, Dec. 19, 1995, the night Pat Riley — Pat the Rat! — returned for the first time to face the Knicks as coach of the Heat.
- One part Shea Stadium, June 29, 2000, when John Rocker came jogging in from the bullpen in the bottom of the eighth inning, his first time back in New York since carpet-bombing the city (specifically the 7 train) in Sports Illustrated.
Then add in some ghost peppers, maybe a quart of Tabasco sauce and maybe a rusty nail.
That fairly approximates the greeting Juan Soto received at Yankee Stadium on May 16, 17 and 18, the last time the Mets and Yankees gathered to contest a Subway Series. There were 143,238 people who squeezed their way through the turnstiles in The Bronx that weekend; let’s say 30,000 of them were Mets fans.
That still leaves 113,238 Yankees fans who’d waited since December to welcome Soto back to the Stadium in the most wholly appropriate manner possible:
