The Mets and The End of Days

This will end badly, I just know it. When a Mets owner starts to publicly rag his own team, it's a sign the end is near. Here it is just one day after the world was supposed to end and it's clear mankind is in for another hell ride.

Owner Fred Wilpon has been in the shadows since he initially got involved with the Mets when he bought a one-percent stake in the team back in 1980. It didn't take much for him to blend into the background. After all, the Mets, born in 1962 were destined to be number two in the Big Apple no matter what they did. Sure, 1969 was fabulous when they shocked everyone by winning 100 games and upset the Braves in the NLCS and the Orioles in five games in the World Series. Their archrivals were grinding gears under the scrooge-like ownership of CBS and people like Jerry (Lobo) Kenny, Horace Clarke, Gene Michael and Jake Gibbs were keeping attendance at Yankee Stadium so low, you could hear a fat guy in the bleachers snore by the third inning.

By 1986 Wilpon became a full partner when he and Nelson Doubleday, Jr. each bought a 50 percent stake. The Mets won their second and last World Series that year and got lots of headlines, but George Steinbrenner still managed to keep his grip on the back pages with his bipolar-like managerial firings and off-the-wall trades. In fact George Costanza finally did what all true Yankee fans wanted to do but couldn't as we see in this video.

Finally in 2002, Wilpon took control of the Mets by buying out Doubleday's

share for $135 million.

But while Wilpon had Mr. Met,  his crosstown enemy had Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle. He tried to make it look like he was a player in the free agent market, but brainless signings like Kaz Matsui, Moises Alou, Kelvim Escobar and Jason Bay showed that he was really  interested in window dressing -  to make it look like he was at least trying. 

Now we come to the good part. Bernie Madoff. Wilpon somehow got himself involved with the infamous thief and is now being sued for more than $1 billion by the trustee trying to get money back for Madoff's victims. This seems to have loosened up things up better than a K-Rod slap in the face.

Not only will Wilpon have to figure a way to come up with more than a billion dollars should he lose his case is the fact that some of his family jewels will need a severe restoration. Jose Reyes, who has tons of ability but seems to be injured most of the time and when he's not runs the bases like a glue-sniffing eighth grader, will become a free agent at the end of the season. How would Wilpon scrape up the boat loads of cash to keep him? He won't. In an interview which will go down in history with the likes of Reggie's "I'm the straw that stirs the drink" that got him into Thurman Munson's doghouse right off the bat, Wilpon tells The New Yorker that Reyes isn't worth the seven-year $142 million Carl Crawford got from the Red Sox. He's right. But that's not going to make Jose want to get his uni dirty. He also said David Wright's a nice guy (the kiss of death, like when your girlfriend says you're a nice guy but...) and a good (not great) player, but not a superstar (ouch, my back is killing me and I'm falling and now I can't get up). But the gem was Wilpon saying he was a schmuck for signing Carlos Beltran to a seven-year $119 million deal after he had a great post season with the Astros in 2004. Yes, you were a schmuck Fred, but there was no way you knew Beltran's knees would turn out almost as bad as Joe Namath's, so don't beat yourself up too much on that one. 

But it's becoming real clear that his huge money crisis is causing him to start blowing up bridges. And now that he's pissed off his three best players and we're only in mid-May, you can be assured the next four months will be kinda like when M. Donald Grant sent Tom Seaver to the Reds. "We're gonna go with the kids," was the Mets mantra. But the "kids" were Doug Flynn, Joel Youngblood and Pat Zachary while Seaver had another five or six years left in his Hall of Fame career.

Get out the dynamite Arnold!