This was playful Fred Wilpon, a side of the Mets principal owner we see actually quite often. To wit, the last time he spoke publicly in a baseball setting, at the team’s spring training complex, Wilpon responded to questions about his financial solvency by whipping out a roll of $5 bills.
Yesterday at City Hall, however, Wilpon came off as less desperate and more serene.
Referring to a reporter’s question whether he wants David Wright for the long term, Wilpon said, “You want motherhood? Of course. I love David Wright. He’s one of the great people, not only in baseball. He’s a great young man.
“And proving himself to be a great baseball player. Not just a good baseball player, but a great baseball player. So of course we really want him.”
“Sandy [Alderson] is really the guy to talk to,” Wilpon concluded.
But on the day Major League Baseball announced Citi Field as the host of the 2013 All-Star Game, however, it felt right to speak with Wilpon himself.
We are witnessing Wilpon and his family in ownership rehab, and it appears to be going quite well so far. The Mets have exceeded expectations on the field, and Wright in particular has played so well it makes sense again to wonder about his future. Yesterday’s announcement, while many years in the making — this had been decided even before Bernard Madoff’s arrest — felt like further validation of the Mets owners’ rise from the ashes.
“I said to Bud [Selig] in the car [while riding to City Hall], ‘Now that this case is over … there are no challenges in life to meet,’ ” Wilpon said. “I know I can take any challenge.”
If you’re a disenfranchised Mets fan, or simply someone who thought that justice wasn’t carried out in the Madoff/Wilpon/Irving Picard matter, then that statement might cause you to vomit. But look: The Wilpons and Saul Katz prevailed. You might not agree with the result, which is fine, except your opinion means nothing. Neither does mine. Only the justice system’s rendering matters.
Selig, who stuck by Wilpon through it all, authorizing a $25 million loan from Major League Baseball and letting 18 months pass before repayment, got to boast when asked whether the Mets’ woes gave him pause to reward them this event.
“I have great faith in the Wilpons and the family and I was very confident they would work things out, and they have,” the baseball commissioner said. “I had no trepidation at all.”
Wilpon, 75, lets his son Jeff, the team COO, oversee the Mets’ day-to-day operations now, yet his affection for Wright matters. If Wright maintains his All-Star production, the Mets will surely extend a long-term offer at some point this year to the third baseman, who has a $16 million team option (against a $1 million buyout) for next year before he would hit free agency.
“My perception of David Wright is always, one of the nicest, finest young men I’ve ever met,” Wilpon said. “This is a great young man. If I had another daughter, I’d love if she married a David Wright.”
Last year, Wilpon created a stir when, in an interview with “The New Yorker,” he criticized Wright and the now-departed Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes. Of Wright, Wilpon said, “A really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar.”
Yesterday, reminded of those words, Wilpon smiled and said, “I think he’s playing like a superstar right now.”
Yes, these are good times, when Wilpon can chuckle about those silly comments for which he never publicly apologized. When he can face the public and not need to deflect questions about bank accounts or competence, and instead look forward to what’s coming.
“It is very meaningful to me,” he said of next year’s All-Star Game. “After all, I know how this thing goes. You’re not going to get another one probably in my tenure. And so it’s exciting.”
It’s the kind of excitement you didn’t associate with the Wilpon reign not long ago, but that — right now, at least — blends in rather seamlessly with everything else.