The Dictatorship
Why Juan Soto’s unfathomably huge contract is making so many people mad
It was one year ago today, Dec. 9, that the Los Angeles Dodgers announced they had signed pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani to a $700 million, 10-year contract — a mind-boggling sum that some sports commentators considered “obscene.”
But now that the New York Mets have signed superstar outfielder Juan Soto to a $765 million contract paid out over 15 years — by far the most expensive contract in professional sports history — Ohtani’s contract, with most of its money deferred for years down the road, looks like a bargain. With additional escalators in the contract, it’s possible the Mets could pay Soto well over $800 million by the time he’s 41.
Who are the Mets supposed to be if they’re no longer the lovable, hapless scrappy underdog cousins of the hated crosstown Yankees?
Mets fans are rightfully ecstatic at landing the Dominican native, who already has a World Series ring (from the 2019 Washington Nationals), four all-star appearances, four Silver Slugger awards, a batting title and three top-five MVP finishes. And he’s only 26 — far younger than when most players reach free agency.
Many fans and casual observers see the Soto signing as everything wrong with the game, or sports in general.
Some are demanding Major League Baseball institute a salary cap to enable competitive balance. And some baseball sentimentalists are wondering just who are the Mets supposed to be if they’re no longer the lovable, hapless scrappy underdog cousins of the hated crosstown New York Yankees? (It’s not insignificant that the Yankees, Soto’s most recent team, offered him nearly as much money as the Mets.)
To these I say, calm down.
First off, baseball already has revenue sharing and a luxury tax for teams with high payrolls. Since 2001, 16 of its 30 franchises have won the World Series. And as I’ve previously written on these pages, the myth of the small market team that just can’t compete is a cruel falsehood sold to fans by billionaire owners, often looking for publicly financed handouts.
Second, Mets fans need not worry about losing their underdog identity, because they’ve rarely been true underdogs in the open field of 30 MLB teams — they’ve just been managed poorly for most of the six decades of their existence. Save for a few lean years in the mid-2010s — when the Mets’ previous owners claimed the financial losses suffered from their investments in Bernie Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme severely limited their ability to spend — the Mets have for decades fielded among the highest payrolls in the game.
Ask any Mets fan of a certain age about “The Worst Team Money Could Buy,” the 1992 team that was loaded with high-priced free agents and a record-setting payroll. That squad played such bad, uninspired baseball that the owners had each player sign a letter of apology to the fans at the end of the season. The following season was arguably even worse. Bobby Bonilla threatened a reporter in the clubhouse. Bret Saberhagen sprayed reporters with a water gun filled with bleach. Vince Coleman maimed a two-year-old girl and injured several others after a game in Los Angeles when he threw an M-80 explosive out of a moving car in the Dodger Stadium parking lot. All that stuff makes pitcher Anthony Young’s 27-game losing streak seem not quite as ignominious.
Red Sox fans will be the first to tell you that winning is more fun than losing, and they don’t consider their high-priced champions any less legitimate.
Steve Cohen, the Mets’ current owner and one of the richest men in the world, seems willing to do anything he can to make better memories for Mets fans. He’s the first owner to cross the $300 million payroll threshold, and has been bold enough to own his failed free agent signings like Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — eating a large part of their sunken contracts and trading them for draft picks. And the $75 million signing bonus Cohen gave Soto could be the sweetener in the deal that put it over the top against the Yankees’ offer.
This kind of spending was once known as “buying championships” — which everyone (especially Mets and Boston Red Sox fans) hated when the Yankees were perceived to be doing it by spending lavishly on free agent players.
But now that the Red Sox have won four World Series over the past two decades — all with huge payrolls stacked with free agents — Sox fans will be the first to tell you that winning is more fun than losing, and they don’t consider their high-priced champions any less legitimate. And although Boston sports teams have won 13 championships since 2001, the region’s sports fans still cling to their previous identities as put-upon underdogs. (This should give hope to conflicted Mets fans fearful of losing their “lovable underdog” image.)
Besides, rooting for Gotham’s new Goliaths provides Mets fans with a level of Yankee schadenfreude that was previously unthinkable. Say what you want about the late George Steinbrenner, he’d never allow his team to be outbid by the Mets. But his son, Hal, seems content to put out a high-priced roster good enough to make the playoffs and leave it at that. Now Yankees fans will have to watch Soto play in Queens — which has to be worth at least some of that $765 million.
So whether you’re a Mets fan who fears being seen as rooting for the rich, big market bullies, or the casual fan appalled by baseball salaries approaching ever closer to a billion dollars, or a Yankees fan ego-bruised by Soto’s crosstown departure — there’s something for everyone to hate about Juan Soto’s contract.
But not me. I’m a Yankees fan, but I appreciated Soto’s stellar single season in pinstripes, and the clutch at-bats that helped carry the team to the 2024 World Series (though the less said about that, the better). Professional sports fandom will break your heart, but I can’t get upset about a kid from Santo Domingo getting his piece of the multibillion-dollar pie that is MLB. Would it be more just if the billionaire owners kept all the profits while the players (aka, the workers) took less than they were worth on the open market simply for the honor of playing the game?
That’s not how I see it. To quote Hyman Roth’s legendary maxim in “The Godfather Part II”: “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.
President Donald Trump is giving fragile U.S.-Iran diplomacy “some space” before deciding whether to resume strikes, United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz said Sunday.
Hours later, however, Trump posted images to social media depicting the U.S. attacking Iran.
Waltz also dismissed concerns over the United States’ diminished munitions stockpiles, even as he conceded that “a lot” of weapons have been depleted, which he said was because of the Russia-Ukraine war and fighting with the Houthis.
“I want to be crystal clear: The U.S. military — and I’ve verified this every which way — has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be,” Waltz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Waltz’s comments came on the second consecutive day of paused fighting between the United Sates and Iran amid reports of a dwindled U.S. stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors, among other munitions.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the depletion of interceptor stockpiles is among the reasons why the administration is wary of resuming major combat operations in a war launched without congressional authorization and which has grown exceedingly unpopular.
But Waltz underscored that the pause in fighting is to allow for an opportunity for peace — not because of an insufficient weapons supply, and warned that those leaking information to the press about the U.S. not having sufficient weaponry “deserve to be in jail.”
“What the president is doing right now, as we’ve seen all along, is giving some talks some space. Talks are ongoing,” Waltz told NBC. “They’re happening at every level, from the more technical aspect of it all the way to the highest levels, of course, within both the Iranian government and the U.S. government.”
He reiterated in an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that Trump “is giving diplomacy a chance.”
But even after Waltz publicly touted giving peace a chance, Trump posted several AI-generated images on Truth Social Sunday afternoon depicting the U.S. striking Kharg Island. In one imageTrump is standing on the deck of an Iranian oil tanker with an American flag in hand.
Trump met with top aides on Friday to weigh escalating military action against Iran, according to a senior White House official. On Saturday, the president told a French journalist that he is “absolutely” considering resuming full-scale war with Iran if the U.S. doesn’t “get 100% of what we want.”
Waltz declined to give a timeline for when the war would end.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that if Iran plays any role in attacking Israel, it would be making a “terrible mistake” and that the response would be “very forceful.”
“If Iran attacks Israel – either directly or through proxies, either with ballistic missiles or UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]’s or killer drones — it will make a terrible mistake,” he said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”“Because our response, Israel’s response, will be very, very forceful.”
Netanyahu, who launched the war with Iran jointly with Trump on Feb. 28, is set to meet with his U.S. counterpart at the White House on Tuesday, the same day he’s scheduled to attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Jake Traylor and Emily Hung contributed to this report.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
BERLIN (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attackthat left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said.
Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.
Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.
“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
Dobrindt put the total number of wounded at 29. The attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.
Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old U.K. resident, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday’s Pride parade but had left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
“They’ll never erase us, we’ll never be gone,” they said. “As long as humanity has existed, we’ve existed. And as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.”
Suspect convicted of ties to Islamic extremism
Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.
There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group — or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.
He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.
In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said.
The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors have appealed.
The court said it took Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account. It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.
He was released from detention pending the appeal.
Berlin’s Pride festival is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festivalknown as Christopher Street Daywas ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
The attack did not occur at the festival, along its route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away on a track in the Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.
Police said a woman was killed.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at a memorial at the iconic gate. They hugged each other and laid down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard one that said: “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Hundreds of thousands had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+celebrations.
“We are simply stunned by what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, a top official with the main national LGBTQ+ association, LSVD+. “This suspected attack hits the heart of the queer community.”
Amsterdam says it will celebrate freedom in the wake of Berlin attack
Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed that law enforcement would find the suspect.
“I would like to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin but also across Germany: Don’t let yourselves, let us not let ourselves, be intimidated,” he said. “These acts have only one purpose: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: Namely our openness and our freedom.”
Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly strengthened.
Berlin has seen Islamic extremist attacks before. In December, 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed a hijacked truck into a Christmas marketkilling 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, an attack that saw a Syrian man convicted in March and sentencedto 13 years.
This week, Amsterdam will be hosting World Pride alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack but aim to prevent any extra measures getting in the way of celebrating freedom and love.
Katy Perry lambasted the Trump administration over the weekend for using her song “Firework” in one of its social media videos about U.S airstrikes on Iran.
The pop star said she was “deeply appalled and angry” over the use of her song in a White House TikTok video featuring bombs exploding set to Perry’s 2010 hit — specifically featuring her lyrics “boom, boom, boom.” A caption on the video, which has more than 6 million views, reads: “Iran has been warned.”
“I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it. I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments,” Perry wrote in an X post on Saturday. “To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.”
White House aide Kaelan Dorr responded to Perry, saying“This you?” He posted Perry’s own military-themed music video of her song “Part of Me,” in which she’s dressed in combat uniform.
Perry, who is in a romantic relationship with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is among many other prominent artists who have rebuked the Trump administration for using their music in videos on official accounts.
Kesha publicly admonished President Donald Trump’s administration in March after the official White House TikTok account used her song “Blow” in another video about military action. “Stop using my music, perverts,” she said on X.
The Filipino American pop star Olivia Rodrigo expressed outrage at the Trump administration after it used her song “All-American Bitch” last fall in a video threatening deportations. She responded to the Department of Homeland Security at the time, saying, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”
While the video is still visible, Rodrigo’s music has been removed.
And last December, Sabrina Carpenter condemned the administration for using her song “Juno” in a video about immigration arrests, which she called “evil and disgusting.”
“Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda,” the singer wrote at the time.
Ariana Grandealso posted on her Instagram story last September criticizing the administration over its immigration policyanti-LGBTQ+ messaging and alleged censorship. In response, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told her, “Save your tears,” a reference to one of her songs. Last month, after the White House used her song “Bye” in an anti-immigration video on TikTok, she commented“Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense.”
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Taylor Swift. The White House poked fun at the mega star earlier this month when shemarried Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. Its official X account posted photo-shopped images of the venue’s billboards blaring, “TRUMP IS YOUR PRESIDENT.” After she endorsed his opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election, Trump wrote, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Last year, Trump went after Bruce Springsteenfor insulting the president at a concert in Manchester, England, where the Boss called the administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous.” Trump called the Grammy-award winning artist “highly overrated,” writing in part, “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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