MLB

Mets’ funny money no laughing matter

PORT ST. LUCIE — Here is the first thing that Fred Wilpon should have done before sending his troops south for the winter: He should have designated one man as the company quipster. Sandy Alderson volunteered for that duty the moment he signed up for a Twitter account and began merrily Tweeting his way from New York to South Florida.

Mets fans can appreciate a good sense of humor, even with times as dire as they are.

They don’t appreciate being made fools of, though.

“I’m OK,” Fred Wilpon said yesterday, upon greeting an assemblage of news media. “I’ve got fives!”

He pulled out a roll of $5 bills. Showed them to reporters.

And received the stiffest kind of forced press-conference laughter in return. Wait until he hears about how that plays back in New York, where Mets fans have spent the past few months desperately trying to talk themselves into the 2012 season, trying to convince their brains and their hearts not to trust their lyin’ eyes.

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If nothing else, the Mets should have the common sense and the common decency to realize their fans are not idiots, that if there are real financial concerns hanging like a millstone around the Wilpons’ necks — and no matter how much Fifth Avenue Freddie tries to spin it, every few minutes, it seems, another bill for another few million comes due — then it is particularly stupid to taunt their customers so blithely, and so blindly.

Alderson can get away with it. For one thing, he has a better sense of humor and a better sense of timing. His Tweets land and they get retweeted by thousands of anxious Mets fans who think they’ve got an ally, who think Alderson’s voice represents their own, and it’s one that says: Yes, we have cash issues. And you know what? Either we laugh about it or we cry about it.

And laughing’s better.

So the GM can be Leno. The owner, he has to be Cronkite. He has to take this stuff seriously. The owner should have been the one who heard about the Mets landing that stupid helicopter on the front lawn at Digital Domain Park, peddling a coterie of executives to the Knicks-Heat game the other night and told that group — led by son, Jeff — that they had one of two choices:

1. Find somewhere else — Florida’s a big state, you know — where they could take off with at least a trace of subtlety, rather than play the role of the busted-flat billionaire who still takes a limo to work (and if that metaphor strikes too close to home, tough).

2. PILE INTO A BLEEPIN’ CAR! FLORIDA HAS CARPOOL LANES!

And here’s the thing: Fifth Avenue Freddie knows that you know. He no longer plays the part of the benign, avuncular, absent-minded professor, shrugging his shoulders and sloughing off questions about the way Mets fans perceive him. He knows. You’d better believe he knows.

“They shouldn’t be concerned about us owning the franchise, because we intend to own the franchise for a very long time,” Wilpon said. “Whether they’re happy about that or not, I don’t know.”

Yes, he does. Of course he does. He knows what the people back home think of him, and his family, and the way they have continuously misinformed the world about how deep their financial woes run. Remember when the Wilpons not only dismissed the notion the Madoff scandal would affect the Mets’ business, they also dismissed the very questions themselves?

That was $52 million worth of payroll ago.

And counting.

“We weren’t being sued then,” Wilpon said.

Maybe not. But everything about the way the Mets were operating then was based upon Madoff and his funny money. At the least, the Mets knew that much, even if Fifth Avenue Freddie wants you to believe he’s been dumber than Mortimer Snerd through this whole process.

And here’s the pity: We should be allowed to feel bad for what’s become of Fred Wilpon. Basic human compassion should be at work here. And would be. But Wilpon continues to wave the Mets as a stick at fed-up fans. And now doesn’t mind sharing a giggle or three at their expense.

What a joke.

And not the funny kind.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com