How some New York athletes spent their first big paycheck
New Mets and Yankees signings Juan Soto (left) and Max Fried have a few ideas on how they'll make use of their freshly-boosted salaries. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp; James Carbone
Newest Yankees pitcher Max Fried is the proud caretaker of a dog named Apollo Fried. Apollo is 3 years old and about to be astoundingly well fed.
See, Apollo Fried — rhymes with "Apollo Creed" — has a very wealthy owner who loves him very much. Last month, Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million contract, which was the biggest ever extended to a lefthanded pitcher. And when asked if he planned to use his first paycheck on a new house or car, Fried momentarily was perplexed.
Then, as if struck by divine inspiration, he had his answer.
“No, I’m not someone that’s all that big on all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I think the first thing that kind of popped into my mind was getting my dog a bunch of dog food.”
While dog food might be an uncommon choice, it does lend itself to a question. When presented the type of money most of us can only dream of, how do athletes first think to spend it?
Believe it or not, it's hardly all designer luxury goods.
Newsday spoke to 11 New York athletes about what they did with some of their bigger paychecks, and the answers were as varied as the players themselves.
There’s the paycheck “when you get called up and [the one] when you sign your first free-agent contract,” retired former Mets reliever Trevor May said by text. May was called up by the Twins in 2014 and signed to the major-league minimum of $500,000.
The first purchase then? “A set of turntables,” he said, specifically a set of CDJ 2000 Nexus turntables (the current iteration, the 3000 turntable, retails for about $2,500). He tacked on a DJM-900, a channel mixer that currently goes for about $2,000, depending on the retailer.
It turned out May was pretty big into buying things in twos. With his first free-agent contract — the two-year, $15.5 million deal with the Mets in 2020 — he got two furnaces for his house.
Juan Soto, who already has more than $82 million in career earnings, according to Spotrac, probably is all set on his furnace situation. So he had other plans for the historic 15-year, $765 million deal he got to sign with the Mets.
“The first thing that came to my mind is that I’m going to try to help a lot of people back in the [Dominican Republic],” said Soto, who grew up in Santo Domingo. “There are a lot of kids that have talent and they can have a bright future but they don’t have the support. I feel like when you don’t have the support [it’s hard to succeed]. When you sign a contract like that, that’s the first thing that comes to mind — help the community and try to help everybody around my country and try to create more chances, more opportunities for people to grow . . . You never know who’s going to be the next Juan Soto.”
There’s plenty of that among all sports and all athletes, of course: spread the wealth.
Evan Neal of the Giants paid off all of his parents' bills. Retired NBA player and Knicks studio analyst Wally Szczerbiak bought his folks a car.
It was “a blue [BMW] X5,” said Szczerbiak, who grew up on Long Island and attended Cold Spring Harbor High School. “I wanted to save a lot of it. That was part of the strategy with the money, because you never know if you’re going to sign another contract. But I wanted to thank my parents for all that they did for me, preparing me to make the NBA, play in the NBA, supporting me through all those years in high school and college. So that was my first big gift.”
Nothing for himself?
“I got myself a jet boat,” he said. “It’s like one of those boats that are like a water ski-type boat. It’s a 20-foot boat and I was living in Cold Spring Harbor and wanted to go out on the water. So that was one of the first things I got myself to kind of share with my family and my fiancee at the time.”
Neal and Giants teammate Brian Burns treated themselves to Rolex Presidential watches, which cost about $39,000 for the basic model. Burns has since bought a house and some rental properties. Isaiah Simmons got a Brabus G-Wagon 4x4 and a watch, which he still owns.
“I just got into watches,” he said. “It’s an expensive hobby and that’s not my type of hobby. [Former Cardinals wide receiver] Larry Fitzgerald told me one thing in my rookie year that I won’t forget . . . He said, 'Find one thing that you really like . . . or else you’re just going to go broke. So my thing is cars, so that’s why I’m not into watches like that. I would like to, but it’s just not my thing.”
Former Jets tight end Anthony Becht also went the car route, with some financial savvy thrown in.
“I didn’t have a car [and] I was driving a beater in college,” Becht said.
Becht’s agent was able to get him a deal on an interest-free, short-term loan for $50,000 before Becht signed his first contract, and he used it to buy an Escalade. When he signed, he paid off the loan right away and eventually invested his cash.
“I'm thinking, like, 'Wow, I'm really doing well,' ” he said. “It taught me a lesson that you just dump it in there, man, and just let it go. That was it.”
After getting called up to the Cardinals, former Mets first baseman and current SNY Mets game analyst Keith Hernandez bought a house in Missouri. Or part of a house. And some land. “I made a down payment of 20% on [either] a $210,000 home or was it a $110,000 home on an acre of land?” he said.
Retired Met Daniel Murphy best remembers what he bought with his first arbitration check — a Lexus. But in a lot of ways, it was more than just a car.
"My mom raised me on [radio financial adviser] Dave Ramsey, which is, you try to pay cash for something, and if the cash you have is [only enough] for a used kind of hoopty," that's what you got.
So Murphy, despite being called up to the majors, would ride into spring training in a beat-up Honda Civic. Then the bigger check came.
"I was able to go to the Lexus shop and get the exact car I wanted new and was like, 'Here's the money for this, because I can afford it,' " Murphy said. "I'm not a car person by any means, but it was about what it symbolized. It was like, 'Oh, if you want to get something nice, get something nice.' Just don't get nice things all the time."
As if to prove the point, Murphy just got rid of that decade-old car, opting instead for a Yukon.
Suffice to say, few dogs out there are going to be living as well as Apollo Fried, who wasn’t actually named after the Rocky character, by the way.
“Originally [he was named after] the Greek god, but then it just happened to line up that his name is Apollo Fried, so it sounds like Apollo Creed,” the pitcher said. “I took that and ran with it like I did it on purpose.”
It's just as well. If we're talking Greek myth, Icarus was the one who got fried, anyway. Lucky break. Lucky (well-fed) dog.
With Tom Rock and Neil Best
Newest Yankees pitcher Max Fried is the proud caretaker of a dog named Apollo Fried. Apollo is 3 years old and about to be astoundingly well fed.
See, Apollo Fried — rhymes with "Apollo Creed" — has a very wealthy owner who loves him very much. Last month, Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million contract, which was the biggest ever extended to a lefthanded pitcher. And when asked if he planned to use his first paycheck on a new house or car, Fried momentarily was perplexed.
Then, as if struck by divine inspiration, he had his answer.
Yankees pitcher Max Fried celebrates the birthday of his dog, Apollo. Credit: New York Yankees
“No, I’m not someone that’s all that big on all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I think the first thing that kind of popped into my mind was getting my dog a bunch of dog food.”
While dog food might be an uncommon choice, it does lend itself to a question. When presented the type of money most of us can only dream of, how do athletes first think to spend it?
Believe it or not, it's hardly all designer luxury goods.
Newsday spoke to 11 New York athletes about what they did with some of their bigger paychecks, and the answers were as varied as the players themselves.
There’s the paycheck “when you get called up and [the one] when you sign your first free-agent contract,” retired former Mets reliever Trevor May said by text. May was called up by the Twins in 2014 and signed to the major-league minimum of $500,000.
The first purchase then? “A set of turntables,” he said, specifically a set of CDJ 2000 Nexus turntables (the current iteration, the 3000 turntable, retails for about $2,500). He tacked on a DJM-900, a channel mixer that currently goes for about $2,000, depending on the retailer.
It turned out May was pretty big into buying things in twos. With his first free-agent contract — the two-year, $15.5 million deal with the Mets in 2020 — he got two furnaces for his house.
Juan Soto, who already has more than $82 million in career earnings, according to Spotrac, probably is all set on his furnace situation. So he had other plans for the historic 15-year, $765 million deal he got to sign with the Mets.
“The first thing that came to my mind is that I’m going to try to help a lot of people back in the [Dominican Republic],” said Soto, who grew up in Santo Domingo. “There are a lot of kids that have talent and they can have a bright future but they don’t have the support. I feel like when you don’t have the support [it’s hard to succeed]. When you sign a contract like that, that’s the first thing that comes to mind — help the community and try to help everybody around my country and try to create more chances, more opportunities for people to grow . . . You never know who’s going to be the next Juan Soto.”
There’s plenty of that among all sports and all athletes, of course: spread the wealth.
Evan Neal of the Giants paid off all of his parents' bills. Retired NBA player and Knicks studio analyst Wally Szczerbiak bought his folks a car.
Wally Szczerbiak watches as his Minnesota Timberwolves play the Chicago Bulls during his rookie season. Credit: Getty Images
It was “a blue [BMW] X5,” said Szczerbiak, who grew up on Long Island and attended Cold Spring Harbor High School. “I wanted to save a lot of it. That was part of the strategy with the money, because you never know if you’re going to sign another contract. But I wanted to thank my parents for all that they did for me, preparing me to make the NBA, play in the NBA, supporting me through all those years in high school and college. So that was my first big gift.”
Nothing for himself?
“I got myself a jet boat,” he said. “It’s like one of those boats that are like a water ski-type boat. It’s a 20-foot boat and I was living in Cold Spring Harbor and wanted to go out on the water. So that was one of the first things I got myself to kind of share with my family and my fiancee at the time.”
Neal and Giants teammate Brian Burns treated themselves to Rolex Presidential watches, which cost about $39,000 for the basic model. Burns has since bought a house and some rental properties. Isaiah Simmons got a Brabus G-Wagon 4x4 and a watch, which he still owns.
“I just got into watches,” he said. “It’s an expensive hobby and that’s not my type of hobby. [Former Cardinals wide receiver] Larry Fitzgerald told me one thing in my rookie year that I won’t forget . . . He said, 'Find one thing that you really like . . . or else you’re just going to go broke. So my thing is cars, so that’s why I’m not into watches like that. I would like to, but it’s just not my thing.”
Giants safety Isaiah Simmons poses in front of a customized Tesla Cybertruck.
Former Jets tight end Anthony Becht also went the car route, with some financial savvy thrown in.
“I didn’t have a car [and] I was driving a beater in college,” Becht said.
Becht’s agent was able to get him a deal on an interest-free, short-term loan for $50,000 before Becht signed his first contract, and he used it to buy an Escalade. When he signed, he paid off the loan right away and eventually invested his cash.
“I'm thinking, like, 'Wow, I'm really doing well,' ” he said. “It taught me a lesson that you just dump it in there, man, and just let it go. That was it.”
After getting called up to the Cardinals, former Mets first baseman and current SNY Mets game analyst Keith Hernandez bought a house in Missouri. Or part of a house. And some land. “I made a down payment of 20% on [either] a $210,000 home or was it a $110,000 home on an acre of land?” he said.
Daniel Murphy looks on during batting practice in his first week with the Mets on Aug. 6, 2008 at Shea Stadium. Credit: Getty Images
Retired Met Daniel Murphy best remembers what he bought with his first arbitration check — a Lexus. But in a lot of ways, it was more than just a car.
"My mom raised me on [radio financial adviser] Dave Ramsey, which is, you try to pay cash for something, and if the cash you have is [only enough] for a used kind of hoopty," that's what you got.
So Murphy, despite being called up to the majors, would ride into spring training in a beat-up Honda Civic. Then the bigger check came.
"I was able to go to the Lexus shop and get the exact car I wanted new and was like, 'Here's the money for this, because I can afford it,' " Murphy said. "I'm not a car person by any means, but it was about what it symbolized. It was like, 'Oh, if you want to get something nice, get something nice.' Just don't get nice things all the time."
As if to prove the point, Murphy just got rid of that decade-old car, opting instead for a Yukon.
Suffice to say, few dogs out there are going to be living as well as Apollo Fried, who wasn’t actually named after the Rocky character, by the way.
“Originally [he was named after] the Greek god, but then it just happened to line up that his name is Apollo Fried, so it sounds like Apollo Creed,” the pitcher said. “I took that and ran with it like I did it on purpose.”
It's just as well. If we're talking Greek myth, Icarus was the one who got fried, anyway. Lucky break. Lucky (well-fed) dog.
With Tom Rock and Neil Best
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
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