Et tu, Soto? Ten takeaways from the Clankees and the new Mister Met

Day One of the new world larder. Ten ruminations... 

1. For the next decade, MLB's marquee rivalry will be Dodgers v Mets. (Regionally, it will be Dodgers v  SD and Mets v Boston.) Each summer, the two teams will field a cavalcade of stars, as regulars on national TV broadcasts. Each October, they will collide in the NLCS. Come winter, they will add the biggest free agents. In all of this, the Yankees will sit on the periphery. 

2. Soto's money-grub isn't the most painful in our history. That distinction still goes to Joggy Cano, who was a homegrown Yankee - a potential lifetime New Yorker - when he left to chase accused rapist Jay-Z's vision of a sports agent empire. Cano's betrayal led to a lengthy Yankee world series drought. This could, as well.  

3. Whatever Cashman summons forth as Plan B, it will not equal the loss of Soto. Frankly, the names currently being whispered - Bregman, Bellinger, Alonzo - make me yearn for a toilet. I'd almost prefer they tank and overhaul their farm system, though that would go against Hal's incredibly low bar for claiming success: That each year, the Yankees contend. In an era of expanded playoffs, that is not much of an accomplishment.  

4. The Mets are about to rule NYC - culturally, financially and spiritually - subjecting Hal to something new: Secondary status in his home city. From his broom closet office at Steinbrenner Field, Home of the Rays, let's hope it is a deeply demeaning experience. Everything about Soto joining the Mets revolves around the floundering franchise, a mountain of wastefulness, that Hal has built. 

5. The world series game 5 meltdown still haunts us. I will go to my grave believing that if the Yankees had beaten LA, if they had enjoyed a trip down the Canyon of Heroes, Soto would have stayed. It would have changed him, like Eb Scrooge yelling at the gutter snipe on Christmas morn. Instead, the way it ended - the way we were so humiliated, so crushed, so flattened - well, it cut a lot of psychic tethers that could have kept Soto a Yankee. I mean, seriously, what an awful taste it left.

6. The saddest moment in this pageant of pain will come this summer, in the Subway Series, when Soto marches to the plate in Yankee Stadium and is... cheered!  That's right. He won't hear booing, and you know why? Because Met fans will outnumber their Yankee counterparts in our own stands. Wait and see...

7. Yank fans can't even rage over the obscene amount of money Soto will make. Whatever free agents we sign - our so called Plan B - rest assured that they will be way, way, waaaay overpaid, because Soto just set new salary parameters. The price of playing? It just went up.

8. Here's a happy thought: Steve Cohen probably isn't done. Having invested so much in Soto, why wouldn't he go for the knockout punch with, say, Alex Bregman? Guy's worth $21.5 billion. A hundred million dollars is barely a bed bug, especially when his manhood is on display. After decades of whining about Yankee spending, Met fans sure have grown comfortable with Cohen's infinite checkbook, which, by comparison, makes Hal look like a chiseling pool boy.

9. We do have one hope: That the Mets flounder under their insane hubris. It happened long ago, 1992, when they signed Bobby Bonilla to a legendary bad deal, planting him into a lineup that included 37-year-old Willie Randolph, 36-year-old Eddie Murray and the future icon, Daryl Boston. (Co-starring Dwight Gooden, David Cone and Brett Saberhagen, who sprayed caustic sportswriters with ever-more-caustic bleach. O! those were the days...) 

10. Soto's signing sorta takes the edge off of Wednesday's Rule 5 draft, eh? Who knows, maybe the Yankees can protect the next Mitch Spence!