PORT ST. LUCIE — The strategy, from the start, has been a simple one: If you act as if everything’s OK, then everything will be OK. Close your eyes, plug your ears, and drink in the merry sunshine of a perfect Florida morning, the healing tonic of all time, and everything that ails the Mets will disappear in a wishful flash.
“We are very confident,” owner Fred Wilpon said a week ago, “that we will run the New York Mets for many years to come.”
Now comes another revelation, that without the kindness of strangers the Wilpon family might have had a hard time running the team through Christmas. Yesterday it was revealed that Major League Baseball lent the Mets $25 million last November. The last time baseball made such a loan, to the Texas Rangers, the team had to declare bankruptcy and was soon sold.
“We did receive a loan from Major League Baseball in November,” the Mets admitted in a statement yesterday, when it was clear they would have no choice but to acknowledge the assistance. “Beyond that, we will not discuss the matter any further.”
It’s just as well, because the longer this goes on, the deeper the Mets careen into debt, the more sad and delusional the proclamations of the Wilpons and Saul Katz become. Forget for a second the billion-dollar anvil hanging over their heads in the form of the complaint Irving Picard has brought representing the victims of Bernie Madoff’s fraud; this is about something even greater than that.
This is about the viability and the credibility of men who own the Mets.
And how can you possibly believe either right now? For two years, the Mets insisted that their financial issues wouldn’t have a shred of influence on the baseball team, despite overwhelming pieces of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, always citing their bloated payroll as evidence that they were no cheapskates. And now it turns out they needed to essentially turn commissioner Bud Selig into a loan shark because they are — in a word — broke?
The Mets continually have patted themselves on the back the past few months, acting like the only honest folk in New York, talking about how they have been upfront and honest about all of their financial issues. Oh, really? Did this loan just slip their minds as they were trying to sell their preposterous propaganda? Did they think that sort of thing would stay underground forever, that major league baseball works under the Sicilian code of omerta?
Last week, Fred Wilpon himself shook an angry finger of accusation at a crowd of media, accusing all but the family’s fiercest media apologists of trying to bury him and his family. He was speaking, as he does, with a humble, patrician tone but wanting the world to know how angry — how hurt — he is to have his honor questioned.
If he’s that angry, I have a useful suggestion.
It’s time he started actually acting the part.
It’s time to be completely forthright, completely forthcoming, to admit once and for all that he has been less than truthful these last two years, ever since Bernie Madoff’s fraud was revealed to the world. It’s time to admit that the Mets are a financial calamity, that they have been irresponsible to the millions of fans who support the team — with their hearts and with their wallets. It’s time to stop acting as if they are the victim of some complicated conspiracy that involves just about everyone except the other tabloid in town, which continues to serve as their personal town crier.
Wilpon wants us to believe that he is an honorable man wronged by dishonest associates, and that would be a lot easier to buy if he only had been upfront about all of this from the beginning. The Wilpons continue to insist that they will be able to keep the team, that dozens of fat cats are dying for the chance to buy a non-controlling interest in the team. Maybe that really is so. We will see.
But here’s something I want to know:
Why would anyone who has the brains and savvy to build a big enough bankroll to write a $250 million check possibly want to simply hand that over to the men who run the Mets? Their defense the whole time has been reduced to this: We’re not crooked, just stupid.
Yeah. Where do you sign up for that kind of bargain?