“Are You Havin’ Any Fun?”
(Lyrics written and sung by Tony Bennett):
Hey, fellow with a million smackers, and nervous indigestion.
Rich fellow eating milk and crackers, I’ll ask you one question.
You silly so and so, with all your dough, are you havin’ any fun?
One can easily see how the Mets’ owners lacked a sound financial investment strategy just by observing their poor strategy in explaining it. After all, it’s better to tell no story than one that keeps changing.
So the market tanks in late 2008, soon taking Bernie Madoff, Prince of Ponzi, with it. In 2009, we learn the Wilpon and Katz families and businesses, including the Mets, were Madoff investors, naturally leading to suspicions that the Mets had suddenly been caught in a money run-down.
1) Tish-tosh, claim the Wilpons. We were barely touched by Madoff; it’s not even an issue. The operation and ownership of the Mets will be unaffected, baseball business as usual. A tiny puff of smoke does not a fire make.
Sounds good.
2) In August 2009, the Mets close down their fall Instructional League camp in Florida. It suspiciously seems like an instant cost-cutter, but the Mets claim there’s no one left in the Port St. Lucie area for their prospects to play against, thus they’ll operate in the Dominican Republic.
3) With that Irving Picard lawsuit on behalf of Madoff victims coming, Fred Wilpon announces that 25 percent of the Mets is for sale. Still, Wilpon insists there are no worries. The suit has no merit; it’s just a personal attack.
4) The suit is unsealed, in part to refute Wilpon’s public claims, a “You-asked-for-it.” As suspected, the Wilpons and Mets were in over their necks with Madoff.
5) Jeff Wilpon, then his father, Fred, both assert their feelings are hurt by newspapers’ suggestions that they didn’t care whether Madoff was a crook, as long as he was their
crook. Wilpon now claims to be a huge Madoff dupe, that his old pal cost him, in cash, “over half-a-billion dollars.”
6) And now we learn that last year Major League Baseball and commissioner Bud Selig floated the Mets a loan — $25 million, at least.
Fascinating.
a) Which auditing or accounting firm did Selig send to examine the Mets’ books before approving such a loan?
b) Who from MLB determined that the Mets’ owners were a good credit risk?
c) Exactly what was the $25 million for? Might it serve to stock the team’s petty-cash drawer, enough to pay Spring Training bills and return the team to New York for Opening Day? Was it to stave off receivership? Was it to cover one specific expense or debt?
Does that loan mean the Mets’ owners have a zero credit rating, unable to borrow from a bank? What’s MLB’s interest rate for team owners? Or was this a handout?
d) Did Selig assign
new general manager Sandy Alderson to run the Mets, perhaps with an idea of him becoming the club’s custodian given where they’re headed? Or will that happen, either way?
e) Who, on Opening Day at Citi Field, will throw out the first plaintiff?
When Casey Stengel said, “Amazin’, amazin’, amazin’,” he had no idea.
Not that it’s any of your business. You’re just supposed to buy the tickets, watch the games on TV, pay for the parking, the eats, drinks, yearbooks and souvenirs . . . and shut up.
A tip of the cap to pregame lineups
Saturday, before the tipoff of Syracuse versus Georgetown, CBS posted the starting lineups. Later, before the tipoff of St. John’s versus Villanova, ESPN posted the starting lineups. Yesterday, during Purdue versus Michigan State, ESPN included the starting lineups just before tipoff. Natural application of common sense.
Why wouldn’t networks post basketball starting lineups after the tip? Because that would make no sense, would it?
Yet all networks wait until football games have begun to give the starting lineups.
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ESPN, the Extraordinarily Shameless Promotion Network, loaded up on Oscars talk last week. What a coincidence that last night the Academy Awards appeared on Disney-owned ABC.
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The Madison Square Dolan Radio Network: At the buzzer of the Rangers’ 2-1 home loss to the Lightning and its 42-year-old, six-team goalie, Dwayne Roloson
yesterday, both ESPN 1050 announcers, play-by-player Don LaGreca
and analyst Dave Maloney
, concluded that the Rangers had given “a valiant effort.”
The Devils’ pregame yesterday observed the one-year anniversary of the USA-Canada gold medal Olympic game. Zach Parise
told how he still hears how everything and everyone stopped that afternoon to watch. Amen. That’s what happens when big games don’t start and end late for TV money.
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Money For Nothing: Just when we began to feel sorry for Tiger Woods
, this: In 2008, after Woods put his name on a new golf course and resort in Dubai, he was paid in excess of $55 million. That project not only hasn’t yet opened, it has been abandoned.
It takes time, but once you begin to appreciate Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman
as a relentless cliché mill, she’s a genuine marvel.
Skiles’ screams fit Stoudemire to a ‘T’
It won’t be easy, but Amar’e Stoudemire
should try giving the real world a shot.
If he thinks Bucks coach Scott Skiles
, whom he does not like, was the only one in the Garden who saw him throw his goggles — Stoudemire thinks Skiles caused
him another technical foul — he’s delusional. On MSG, Mike Breen
and Walt Frazier
were amazed that he hadn’t initially been hit with a “T.”
Besides, late in a close game, which opposing coach would have chosen not
to holler about that to the officials?
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Reader John Siciliano
of The Bronx suggests that describing Carmelo Anthony
as “a volume shooter,” is just the modern, politically correct way of calling Anthony “a chucker.”
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Duke Snider
, dead at 84. If flags in Brooklyn this week aren’t flown at half staff, then who are they waiting for?
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Despite recorded claims that “there are no outages,” Time-Warner Cable in Manhattan yesterday had no MSG (Lightning-Rangers) and no YES (Yankees-Phillies).
Eastern Michigan played Western Michigan yesterday. The game was blacked out in Central Michigan.
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General Confusion: Speaking of insanity in the Middle East, reader Tom Lake
asks: Why, if Libya’s Col. Moammar Khadafy
has been such a big shot for over four decades, he’s still only a Colonel?