#wilpons

9.14.2020

We’re gonna talk Mets baseball again. I hadn’t intended this blog to be about baseball. It’s clearly titled “music and depression”. But there are few things more depressing than Mets baseball, so here we go. 

It’s been a year of a lot of feels. The shortened season, the BLM walkouts, the death of Tom Seaver, and now the sale of the New York Mets. 

The facts as I understand them: Steve Cohen, billionaire hedge fund manager, has paid $2.42 billion for 95% of the New York Mets. The sale will be finalized at the owner’s meeting this November, when it must be approved by at least 23 of the remaining 29 franchise owners. The sale does not include SNY, the Mets’ cable tv station. 

$2.42 billion is the highest amount ever paid for a franchise. That said, Cohen offered to buy 80% of the Mets for $2.6 billion last year. Cohen wanted to take over the team right away. The Wilpons, who have owned the team in percentages, and then in full since 1980, wanted to retain control for five years. This deal is not only for $180 million less than the previous offer, it’s for 15% more of the team. 

The hate: Only the Wilpons could drag this out nearly a year and then screw themselves out of hundreds of millions of dollars and team equity. 

The depressing oversharing reaction: As I mentioned in my Seaver post, I went to my first Mets game in 1983. I tried to swear off the Mets when we moved to California two years ago. That’s 35 years of depressing baseball. I was doing pretty ok with it. Then COVID. Then BLM. Then Seaver. Now this. It’s too much and in looking for some kind of stability, I started watching again because my wife wanted to. It was predictably comforting in ways California baseball just isn’t. 

The A’s are no respite from the Mets and Dallas Braden as an announcer is insufferable. The Giants are trash and their announcers are a snoozefest. The Dodgers are corporate and boring and they’ve replaced Vin Scully with more corporate and boring. 

All I have known for my entire life is the Wilpon owned Mets. The last time they were unstoppable was 1986. Every other team has either been “just good enough to contend” or dismal. And again, as I referenced in the Seaver post, the game broadcast is home. It was apparent on the first game of this shortened season. It was apparent on the BLM walkout game. And it was none more apparent than on the Seaver game. 

I hate this reality. I hate it because I really wanted to leave New York behind. Isn’t that the American Dream? Move across the country and start a new life for yourself? Forget who you were, or at least, give yourself the ability to heal. 2020 has stripped all of my progress away in some respects. And I’ve made progress in others. 

The thing that bothers me most is the visceral reactions. I sat on my couch with my head in my hands again tonight over this team. These reactions are ones of true loss or panic. It feels gross because of the source. It’s what I imagine drug addicts or abuse victims feel like when after a period away, they go back. That loving, sinister embrace. It feels so good and at the same time, it feels like failure. 

Sources: #Mets insured Wright contract. Once he misses 60 days, team would recoup 75 percent of contract while he is unable to play.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 27, 2015

Obviously, #Mets hoping that Wright will not miss a significant amount of time. But if he is out more than 60 days, they are insured.

That was the IM I got right after the game ended from my cousin.  He is a Mets fan, too.  He also tweeted out that he won't drop any more money for the Mets until there are major changes and the Wilpons are gone.  I'm calling bullshit, but, we'll see.

This is a cousin who shares Boppy as his grandfather - and his mom is the eldest of the 7 brother and sisters that are our aunts and uncles, so she was the first initiated in 1962 when the Mets franchise was born.  So this is him reacting out of frustration - and I really wish that I could make the same statement and stick to it.  But, I can't.  He probably won't either.

But, really, how do I stay so loyal?  People have continually said that being a Mets fan is like an abusive relationship - we just can't walk away.  I guess my relationship with the Mets is the only one that I can maintain, so I might as well stick it out.  Wait, wouldn't that be considered, at the very least, a dysfunctional relationship?  I have plenty of dysfunctional relationships, so I'll agree with that.

Probably because the MetsFanFriends have become, well, the MetsFanFriends.  And, really, while all this sucks, people much older (and probably wiser) than I have stuck it out, like Boppy - after living through their freakin' team LEAVING, they survived 1962, the Tom Seaver trade, the Nolan Ryan trade.  I survived the early 1990s, the mid-90s, and all the rest.  If we all survived all that, who is to say we can't see the light at the end of the tunnel?  I know, the real light is the passing of the torch to someone named anything other than Wilpon.