Earlier this week, a professor of mine asked the class if anyone was a baseball fan. I raised my hand but was tempted to add a disclaimer: As a Mets fan, I felt that this affirmation required a pretty loose definition of the word “baseball.”
This question came up days after Mets fans received an online dose of insult to add to our injury. On his recently launched Twitter feed, General Manager Sandy Alderson began poking fun at the team’s financial woes. He joked how he was driving down to Florida for spring training and needed a fundraiser or possibly a PAC contribution to pay for gas money. The tweets read like satire, but this, sadly, was not the case. No, the GM of this poor team, which has suffered in recent years from lack of All-Stars, lack of money, and lack of wins, has resorted to public self-mockery.
The saddest part of the joking is that, although Alderson may be striking nerves, nobody is trying to debase his humor regarding the team’s finances. The franchise is deeply in debt, a problem which cannot be chalked up entirely to the team’s woeful lack of on-field success. The man to blame here is Mets majority-owner and generally reprehensible human being Fred Wilpon. During his time as owner, Wilpon has made investment decisions that range from stupid to criminal, and legal action has been brought against him on allegations that rather than losing money as he had originally claimed, he profited some $300 million off of Bernie Madoff’s cataclysmic Ponzi scheme, which contributed to the Mets’ financial woes. Madoff has testified that Wilpon knew nothing about his illegal dealings, and a few days ago the owner petitioned the Supreme Court on these grounds, requesting that the body lower the potentially staggering amount of money he would need to pay if he loses his case.
But even if this is true, and that Wilpon did not turn an intentionally blind eye to Madoff’s dealings, it does little to improve his reputation. In May of last year, long before Alderson began tweeting his comedic remarks, Wilpon made disparaging comments to the press about his own players, bashing team favorites like Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and David Wright. The players publicly downplayed the incident as the rant of a man facing the financial destruction of both himself and the 50-year-old franchise for which he is responsible. Even so, this was widely regarded as a dick move.
But while his commentary against certain players seemed unwarranted, his tone hit far too close to home. The team’s recent record has fared almost as poorly as its payroll. Mets fans still feel the sharp pang of the 2006 National League Championship Series, when Beltran, in the ninth inning of game seven with the bases loaded, looked at strike three. For a normal team, that strike would have stung for a while, but something in the intervening five years would have given them something to be happy about. This hasn’t been the case with Mets fans, who have to look all the way back to 1986 for any real solace. The team has been consistently plagued by poor pitching staff and general mediocrity, and with recent changes in lineup, like Jose Reyes cutting his signature locks and abandoning ship for the Marlins, things aren’t looking up.
Here’s where the personal pain of the fan comes in. In 2011, I attended two Mets games. The first was in D.C., where I suffered through a loss to the Nats. The second happened after a mysterious phone call to my father from a “Personal Ticket Liaison” who identified himself only as Matt. Matt offered my dad three tickets, completely free of charge, in a good location in the embarrassingly nice Citi Field for a game on a beautiful June evening. We showed up at the will-call desk the day of the game and, sure enough, there were three tickets with our names on them. Apparently, attendance has suffered so much that the team has resorted to actually giving tickets away. On the way home, we considered calling this Matt guy up and demanding monetary reimbursement for our emotional loss—if he hadn’t given us the free tickets, we wouldn’t have had to watch our guys get pummeled by, of all teams, the Pittsburgh freaking Pirates.
But apparently, despite the losses, the debt, and the general negativity, there are some Mets who maintain the team’s status as a legitimate institution with the power to win. Recently, first baseman Daniel Murphy was quoted saying that the 2012 Mets “expect to go to the playoffs.” If he’s right, let’s hope for games close to home—with the whole team piled in Alderson’s car, maybe the gas money will be manageable.
