Juan Soto has already left his mark on two franchises at just 26

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Whether he returns to the Yankees or not, there's no denying that Soto is one of the defining players of this generation.

On most Saturday nights, the bar had by this point removed some of its tables, set up a DJ booth, turned off the televisions, turned on the LED moving lights, and cranked up the tunes. After an afternoon and an evening dominated by college football and hot wings, dancing and drinking would come to dominate the night.

This was not a normal Saturday night. Instead of dozens descending on the dance floor, every eye in the bar was fixed on the television, as Juan Soto stepped up to the plate with a pair of runners on in the top of the tenth. Just an hour prior, the bar had erupted into pandemonium, as Giancarlo Stanton launched a 3-2 pitch into the left field seats to tie the game at two apiece. While the pandemonium had subsided in the intervening innings, nervous energy boiled under the surface, fifteen years of disappointment and heartbreak looking for an opportunity to burst.

What followed was one of the greatest at bats of all time. After taking a first pitch breaking ball for a strike, Soto quickly fell behind 1-2, fouling off what looked at the time to be the best pitch he'd see, a breaking ball in the middle of the zone. And yet, the whole time, Soto looked like he had Cleveland reliever Hunter Gaddis — a pitcher who had a 1.57 ERA and a 0.763 WHIP on the season — right where he wanted him, fouling off breaking ball after breaking ball and daring him to throw a fastball.

At long last, he got a fastball, a 95 mph pitch above the zone that, in truth, most hitters would whiff on, and he drilled it high and deep to center. Off the bat, nobody was sure if it had the distance, but as Lane Thomas tracked it back to the warning track, the crowd waited with bated breath. And as Thomas looked down dejectedly as the ball sailed over his head, the crowd exploded in celebration.

Our story begins on May 19, 2018, in Washington. Second baseman/outfielder Howie Kendrick suffered a torn Achilles that ended his season, joining a small army of outfielders already on the shelf — Adam Eaton, Brian Goodwin, Victor Robles, and Rafael Bautista. In desperate need of healthy bodies to man the outfield, Washington general manager Mike Rizzo took a major risk, promoting the club's No. 2 prospect (the 15th-ranked prospect in all of baseball) straight from Double-A despite the fact that he had just 35 plate appearances in eight games at the level.

Soto was just 19 years old when he got the call, immediately making him the youngest player in the league. Many general managers would have been hesitant to make this move, afraid that by pushing a young player too hard too fast, they might stall out and fail to make the jump to the Show. Rizzo, though, takes the opposite approach: although recognizing that players might suffer setbacks in their development, at the end of the day, talent wins out. Speaking to reporters when Soto was first promoted, he simply said, "If you can play, you can play."

Rizzo turned out to be right. Two days after his promotion, he started his first game in left field, where he drilled a pitch 422 feet to the opposite field for his first career home run; in doing so, he became the youngest National to homer in a game and the first teenager to do so since Bryce Harper six years prior. A few weeks later, on June 13th, he played in Yankee Stadium for the first time, where hit two home runs to become just the third teenager to have a multi-homer game on the road. And two days after that, he participated in a suspended game against the Yankees dated to May 15th, where he homered; due to the quirks of suspended games, which assign all stats to the day the game began, Soto has the distinction of being the first player in Major League history to technically hit a home run before his Major League debut. He was in the league less than a month, but he had already etched a place in the history books.

Regular season accolades may be nice, but it's in October where you establish your legacy. The next year, Soto followed up a strong sophomore campaign with an October for the ages. Down 3-1 in the eighth inning of the NL Wild Card Game, he laced a liner to right field off Milwaukee closer Josh Hader that cleared the bases and gave the Nationals a 4-3 lead that they would never relinquish.

Just a few days later, with the Nationals down one in a winner-take-all NLDS Game 5 against the Dodgers, Soto deposited the first pitch he saw from Clayton Kershaw, coming on in relief in the eighth inning, into the seats in right-center field to tie the game; while Howie Kendrick's tenth-inning grand slam is the one that gets remembered, it doesn't happen without this blast from his left fielder.

The Nationals proceeded to set down the Cardinals in four games, bringing Soto to the biggest stage for the first time in his career. And boy, did the bright lights not faze him. He made his presence known early with a solo shot and a two-run double off Houston Astros starter Gerrit Cole, leading the Nats to a key Game 1 victory.

With their backs against the wall in Game 6, Soto hit his fifth home run of the postseason, this one off Justin Verlander, to give the Nationals a lead they would never relinquish to force a Game 7.

Washington would go on to win Game 7, taking home their first World Series in franchise history. That does not happen without Soto, who posted an absurd .277/.373/.554 in the postseason, and who always found a way to come through in the big moments when his team needed him most. The future was looking bright in Washington.

Unfortunately, things fell apart quickly after the 2019 season, through no fault of Soto. Because of this, recognizing that they did not stand much of a chance at re-signing him in free agency — he reportedly turned down a 15 years, $440 million deal that seemed absurd at the time but now would be considered a team-friendly deal for a player of his caliber — the Nationals opted to put him on the trade block, ultimately sending him to San Diego for a package of prospects that is currently helping bring Washington back to relevance. There, Soto continued to perform, but the Padres' 2023 went off the rails, and in need of replenishing their entire pitching staff and with their left fielder just one year away from free agency, the Padres swung a deal with the Yankees that brought Juan Soto (and Trent Grisham) to the Bronx.

Soto has been in pinstripes only a year, and with him currently a free agent, he may ultimately only spend one year in pinstripes. Even in this short period of time, though, he has made his mark on the Yankees Universe. The bleacher creatures serenaded the Stadium with chants of "Re-sign Soto" throughout the latter part of the season, and even made sure Hal Steinbrenner heard them while receiving the AL championship trophy in Cleveland. Walk through the concourse in Yankee Stadium, and the only jersey you saw more often among current players than Soto's was the captain himself, Aaron Judge. The fans fell in love with Soto, because when the game was on the line, from the game-saving throw on Opening Day to preserve a late lead over the hated Houston Astros, to the clutch home run in San Francisco, to the walk-off single against Boston, he showed he was the player you wanted in the center of the action.

And when it mattered most of all, on the biggest stage, he came through with the biggest Yankees postseason hit in fifteen seasons. Juan Soto brought World Series baseball back to the Bronx. Although the team ultimately fell short against the Dodgers, for a generation of Yankees fans, for whom the dynasty years are simply history and whose experience watching Yankees baseball has primarily been the longest World Series drought in franchise history, he will forever be a hero, just as he is in Washington.

Not bad at all for a guy who turned 26 last month.