Hey there. It’s been a minute. This is the part where you probably expect me to be a bit coy and rhetorically ask if anything big happened in the news while I was away. Let’s not do that. Two big things happened: the Mets signed Clay Holmes and Griffin Canning.

Okay, I had to make a bad joke. Sorry about that. The actual big news: Juan Soto agreed to the largest sports contract in history with the New York Mets. Four days prior, thousands of people on the internet celebrated the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by our newest national heartthrob, Luigi Mangione.

I’m writing this today after they extradited Mangione to New York. They surrounded him with a bunch of cops in tactical gear. Our corrupt baseball-oblivious mayor was there too. The apparatus of the state is trying its best to show other wealthy one-percenters that they are taking this very seriously, that their safety is guaranteed.

Meanwhile, the rest of us saw an avatar of America’s worst industry face the ultimate retribution for gross profiteering. We cheered. Some of us clutched pearls and lamented the concept of vigilante justice, particularly those of us with opinion columns in major newspapers and magazines.

Oh wait, that unnecessary perp walk might also allay those columnists’ fears.

Just a quick comparison: Brian Thompson’s net worth was $43 million. Meanwhile, Steve Cohen is worth a staggering $21.3 billion. That’s why he can hand out historical contracts to baseball players. Do I wish the same fate upon the owner of my beloved Mets?

Short answer, yeah. Long answer, well that’s why we’re writing this, isn’t it?

I’m not coy with my politics. They fall somewhere in the realm of anarcho-syndicalism most days. I understand that if such a system were to ever take hold, which it won’t in my lifetime, that many things would radically change. The corporate powers that be would cease to exist, and by extension, Major League Baseball.

I’m fine with that.

I feel the fear of the unknown, the love of familiarity, is what holds citizens of the United States back from embracing anything revolutionary in nature. We love our TV shows, we adore our sports. Sure, we hate insurance deductibles, but maybe they’re worth it if we have Monday Night Football to look forward to.

I’m not the first nor the most eloquent person to make this observation. I can however sympathize with this feeling to an extent. If Steve Cohen walked away from the Mets tomorrow, if he suddenly decided that a “civic responsibility” was not in his best interest, I would be hurt.

Having a billionaire being able to dish out the big bucks for my rooting interest has been nothing short of extraordinary. Sure, it backfired in 2023. However, I cut my teeth of sports fandom on the small-market Orlando Magic. I’m not used to my team being the big spender, to being the bad guys.

Ultimately though, Steve Cohen is a bad guy. The harm he inflicts upon ordinary people is much more abstract than the cut-and-dry malevolence of America’s healthcare industry. The layman can understand getting a claim for their ER visit denied. It’s much harder for someone to wrap their head around how insider trading leads to their rent going up.

The bad guy is trying to make amends. That’s why he calls owning the Mets a civic responsibility. Please ignore his manipulation of our economy and the massive hoarding of wealth. He’s providing entertainment for us. Isn’t that enough?

I can be of two minds. I can enjoy the product that is MLB in this capitalist hellscape. I can be happy that the evil rich man who owns my team is throwing a couple of his big bills at Juan Soto. I can be happy that Brian Johnson is dead. I can be happy if a violent revolution of the proletariat ends baseball as we know it.

These last few weeks served as a reminder that one does not have to abandon all that gives them joy if it fundamentally would not exist in their ideal world. I won’t get any joy out of my new health insurance deductible in January. I will get joy out of Juan Soto’s first dinger in the blue and orange. Until the streets are running red with the blood of every CEO, that joy will have to do.