Sell the team, Fred.
In another time, under different circumstances, it might almost seem noble, the way Fred Wilpon stubbornly insists that he will retain control of the Mets, the way he continues to maintain that the team will be as much a part of his family’s legacy as the crown jewels are to the Windsors.
Most of the big guys in this town have heard their fans call for abdication when times have grown grim. There was a time when Yankees fans would have chipped in their Christmas Club accounts to help someone buy out George Steinbrenner. Knicks fans go to bed every night hoping they’ll see the headline “DOLAN SELLS!” greeting them on the back page one glorious morning.
Fred Wilpon himself probably would’ve liked to see a white knight come out of the darkness sometime in early 1957 or so, someone who would’ve bowled over Walter O’Malley with an offer good enough to shoo O’Malley back to his bank desk, keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn,and spare the Borough of Churches the indignity of abandonment.
The problem is, that never happens, not around here. The big guys are big guys for a reason. O’Malley found kegs of gold in California. The Steinbrenners still own the Yankees, almost a year after the Old Man passed. And for all of Dolan’s missteps with his basketball and hockey teams, just about everything else in the family’s possession makes ATMs seem cash-poor by comparison.
Wilpon is different. Forget, for a second, the silly comments a magazine writer buried midway through a 22-page profile we all hungrily consumed yesterday. If you read the piece, it is eminently clear why the notoriously press-shy Wilpon agreed to the story, as a way of getting his side of the ongoing Madoff messiness out there, to combat the equally stubborn Irving Picard, trustee for the plundered Ponzi victims.
But here’s the problem:
Every time Wilpon spins, every time he tries to explain himself, it becomes harder and harder to believe he has any prayer of being a viable owner again. Not in New York. Not in a baseball town opposite the Yankees. His p.r. flacks and media lackeys insist otherwise, try to say that once the Picard mess vanishes, you’ll see, the box office will be booming in Flushing.
But that’s unrealistic. The Wilpons are going to pay something once the Picard mess is resolved, somewhere between the $150 million or so they’ve volunteered and the $1 billion Picard wants.
Fred Wilpon built a nice life for himself, a nice nest egg. He is not Rockefeller. He never would have been able to buy the team in the first place without Nelson Doubleday’s money, would likely not have been able to buy Doubleday out 20 years later without at least a helping hand from the invisible cash in his Madoff accounts.
Let’s believe Wilpon that he was a dupe and not a crook in all of this. So what? He has already taken a hit. Has already agreed to hock 49 percent of the club. Is looking at another hit. Whether he was complicit or not is beside the point.
Does he love the team? Unquestionably. If he wanted to prove his cred as a fan, he sure did that, sounding like Freddy from Farmingdale in the New Yorker story. Wilpon’s protectors immediately declared this was nothing that Boss Steinbrenner didn’t do back in the day.
Only Steinbrenner always backed up his belligerence with his bankbook, sometimes to his detriment. The Yankees were always solvent. Fans who hated Steinbrenner probably hated the vapor-lock grip he held on the team, even in exile, because he could always cover his bets. Remember, Steinbrenner also paid less than $1 million to grab the Yankees, same as Wilpon did with the Mets. Steinbrenner’s break is that he never sent Hank or Hal to Roslyn High School, so they could never run into Mark Madoff in the school cafeteria.
If Fred Wilpon hoped this story would change the way his fans looked at him, he was right. Before yesterday, they merely hoped he would sell the team eventually. Now they all but demand it, and sooner rather than later. It’s hard to fathom, after reading all 11,000 words, how this story can possibly end well for Fred Wilpon.
Until he sells the team, anyway.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com