Yankees fans just lost leverage in battle with Mets fans after sad Juan Soto chant

The New York Yankees took a loss on Sunday in the Bronx, and in a separate incident from the game itself, so did a small but significant segment of their fanbase.

During the eighth inning of the game at Yankee Stadium against the Miami Marlins, Yankees fans could be heard chanting, "F-ck Juan Soto!" in an indefensible show of pettiness and small-mindedness. This wasn't a couple of knuckleheads, either — it was a mob large and loud enough to have their ugly chanting picked up on the YES broadcast.

Yankees fans engaging in classless Juan Soto chant should be ashamed

This low-life chant from Yankees fans only reflected poorly on the greater fanbase. Sure, Mets fans can be petty and annoying with their "little brother" narrative that has no attachment to reality, but for Yankees fans to demean a former Yankee like this only represents stooping to the level of the ignorant. There are good and bad segments of fans across both teams' supporters, no doubt, and this was characteristic of the worst of them.

There's also the fact that Soto simply doesn't deserve this treatment. This isn't a guy who betrayed the Yankees in such stunning fashion that even level-headed fans were upset. Soto took the most money on the market, which is very far from a crime, especially for a player who was but a mercenary superstar in the Bronx (having played just one season there at the time he made his free agency decision).

Let's not pretend like Soto wasn't absolutely awesome during his brief stint in pinstripes, either. Due in large part to Soto's contributions, the Yankees reached their first World Series since 2009, representing the peak of the franchise in several years.

Moreover, Soto has been nothing but cool with Aaron Judge since his departure, and he's never been afraid to express his admiration and respect for the Yanks, to the point where we're all convinced he misses being on the team.

Juan Soto isn't perfect, but he doesn't deserve hate from Yankees fans

Soto's recent ordeal of deleting his reply on the Yankees' Instagram page was completely misinterpreted by fans. This was Soto trying to be tongue-in-cheek with his former club that he deeply respects — like poking fun at your sibling. Once Soto realized that fans didn't get what he was doing, he took the reply down. Should he have stood his ground? Yes, but the fans hating on him were in the wrong.

Yankees fans were ridiculing Soto for supposedly watching the Yankees' official hype video. The assumption here was that he personally visited the Yankees' Instagram and watched the video. First of all, this very well may not have happened, as Soto could have easily been sent the video by a friend or family member. But even if it did, who cares? Is Soto not like every single one of us, who would no doubt still be attached to the team we reached a World Series with less than two calendar years ago?

Would you or I, if we were Soto, not still be rooting for Judge, with whom we shared a clubhouse for a journey to within three wins of a championship? Yankees fans should be embracing Soto for still caring about his former team, not ridiculing him for this care. Be better.