Watching Juan Soto -- as a Met! -- with the Bleacher Creatures - ESPN

NEW YORK — The first sustained jeers of the 2025 Subway Series, a raucous and crude chorus of pent-up resentment, were unleashed 20 minutes before first pitch of Game 1 on Friday, when Juan Soto emerged to stretch in center field in his New York Mets grays.

«F--- Juan Soto!» reverberated from the bleachers beyond the right-field wall amid boos all around Yankee Stadium. Soto, ever the showman, did not directly acknowledge the greeting. But he subtly tugged at the bill of his cap toward the bleachers, surely in the direction of at least some people who had showered him with love last summer into autumn as the New York Yankees rode Soto and Aaron Judge's historic tandem production to the franchise's first World Series appearance in 15 years before Soto ditched them during the winter.

This was a battle between first-place teams 10 miles apart, a fact that alone would have provided more juice than usual to the weekend series. The addition of Soto's perceived betrayal, one of the sport's biggest storylines, made it perhaps the most anticipated meeting between the clubs since the 2000 World Series.

Marc Chalpin took his usual bleacher seat in Section 203 behind right field, surrounded by his Bleacher Creature brethren, at approximately 6:30 p.m., anticipating the inevitable. If he had it his way, fans wouldn't have greeted Soto in his return to Yankee Stadium with vulgarity. «F--- Juan Soto!» was, to Chalpin, both over-the-top in its obscenity and underwhelming in its creativity.

Chalpin, tasked to initiate the Bleacher Creatures' famous Roll Call since 2016, didn't believe Soto warranted the vitriol, because he was a Yankee for only one season and, above all, didn't win a championship. But he knew the three-word melody was