WHAT the Mets long for, what they yearn for, what they need now as much as at any time in their history, is leadership that is not only less prone to self-humiliation and self-immolation, but leadership that inspires, leadership that exhorts, leadership that, well, leads.
Forget general manager Omar Minaya for the time being, because while his may be the fractured voice of news gatherings and conference calls, and while his contract may say otherwise, he is transient, a bridge from here to whoever occupies the seat next.
Ownership, at least this ownership, at least for now, is here to stay. And this, right now, is where Jeff Wilpon must finally step forward and prove that he has what his father might call the “skill sets” to really, truly guide the Mets into something resembling confidence, and competence.
Finally, at long last, it means Wilpon must prove that his reign will be as much about achievement as DNA, that he is an operator worthy of his lofty status on the corporate flow chart. No more can he seek glory in the shadows while deflecting blame like a goalkeeper. His team — his birthright — cries out for leadership, begs for direction, the kind that no third baseman can offer, the kind no manager can provide, the kind no general manager can give.
These are the Wilpon Mets, for better or worse. Mostly, what we’ve gotten is worse. Mostly, what we’ve seen is a constant flow of banana peels and slapstick sight gags that would be hysterical if they weren’t so degrading. The Mets have long counted on the fealty of fans who either go back to Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds and inherited them in 1962, or were born to the children of Brooklyn and Manhattan and took over those loyalties by rote.
But this is 2009, and the cost of rooting for a baseball team is too great to embrace a mindless allegiance. Mets fans have learned to live with — even to embrace — the notion of being the underdog in a city that co-stars the Yankees. But they have been served by an ownership that opened a ballpark stripped of any semblance of the team’s history and operates a franchise that too often has the look and feel of an open mike night at the Comedy Store.
That can’t go on forever. Mets fans won’t tolerate it. And they deserve better, especially at these prices.
So Jeff Wilpon has to come out of seclusion more, has to offer us real ideas and real vision for what he wants his baseball team to be, has to prove, once and forever, that he has the goods to make the Mets professional — or he has to find someone who can and stay out of his way.
Nobody is asking Wilpon to become Hank Steinbrenner. But a little Hal wouldn’t hurt. A little more public presence would make it seem more like Wilpon cares about the product on the field, less like he’s hiding in the box office, counting receipts.
Can he do this? Was yesterday’s emergence from his cocoon to both apologize for and support Minaya — “Omar’s our general manager, Omar’s going to be our general manager. . . . He didn’t do the right thing.” — an aberration or the first chapter in a New Jeff?
We don’t know. We do know that he helped lay the groundwork, however subtly, for Monday’s follies by crafting and cultivating a symbiotic — and often sycophantic — relationship with the same newspaper Minaya attacked Monday. However inappropriate the reporter’s behavior may have been, it was the Mets themselves who have long encouraged such coziness, with Jeff as chief masseuse.
Mets fans might hate this, but the Wilpons are likely to be around for a while. They have a new park, a flourishing TV network. The Mets, in their Madoff world, represent their stable investment.
Everyone else in the organization will leave it at some point, whether it’s three months, three years, three decades from now. Jeff Wilpon will be here a lot longer. That doesn’t have to be an apocalyptic reality.
But it’s high time he proves otherwise.