New York Mess, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #172 | @MDWorld

March 22, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 0 Comments

Dear Art,

Today we settled a very prominent lawsuit filed against our organization. It was alleged that we at the New York Mets had knowledge that Bernie Madoff was operating a scam but said nothing because we were making huge amounts of money. We denied the allegations strenuously but ended agreeing to pay $162 million to swindled investors. This will lead to some dire financial straits for our organization. There’s talk that we will need to sell minority shares to cover this and other debts or risk being taken over by MLB the same way the Dodgers were. We know that the Mets are your favorite team, how would you save the organization?

-Fred Wilpon, CEO New York Mets

Fred,

You called me far too late in this process my good man. I could have put together and amazing defense for you: anyone who has seen you evaluate baseball talent would never believe you could make a shrewd business investment even an illegal one. You would only need one disgruntled former Met fan on that jury and you’d get off. You could recognize him during opening statements, he would be the one nodding grimly. You could pop the champagne that night.

I see what you’re doing with all this financial stuff. It must be hard to be a really rich team owner during a heavy recession. Deciding to cozy up to your fans by showing that you too have piles of debt you have to climb out from under is a clever move. The cracks are pretty apparent though. Did you mean to release this list of potential shareholders? It contains high ranking team officials related to you by blood, companies you own and people who would only be able to accept your offer if they decided not to buy the Dodgers. A murderers row of not getting any new blood into your ownership structure.  Whoops, wrong franchise.

This isn’t the reception you were hoping to get from me, I know. You think I’m a fan. What you might not know is that being a Mets fan traumatized me so thoroughly that I had to stop watching baseball entirely. Your unending onslaught of poor player acquisitions, late season collapses and boneheaded PR campaigns made me abandon the first sport I ever loved. I wish you had gone to trial, I wish you had been found liable for the original lawsuit amount of $1 billion, I wish they tore down that horrific new stadium and turned it into a municipal park. Now you’ll charge ever escalating ticket prices to watch the cheapest team you can put together maximize your profits so you can pay off your debts. I suppose it could be worse, you could be a Steinbrenner.