It has taken me all day to put a post together about yesterday’s Mets Christmas Party that myself and other Mets bloggers were honored to be invited to. The reason it’s tough writing today is that this organization has pulled at every emotions a person can have, love, hate, compassion, pride all of these feelings swirl in my head when it comes to the New York Mets.

All of the financial mumbo jumbo brings out the hate in me. I hate Bernie Madoff, I hate the Skill Sets for getting involved with this rat bastard and not having the god damn street smarts that every good son of the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn is born with. I hate with a fucking passion that the Mets have become a joke to the main stream media and to fans of other teams who have taken Mets bashing to the bully level. The main stream media in this city has been busy destroying the organization and no doubt the owners of this team have given them plenty of ammunition to bash them, but to see these jackals mingle amongst themselves having a grand old time at Citi Field as the get ready to compete with each other on who can write the best ”Mets sucks” column puts me in a rage. I hate that the owners treat the fan base like idiots. I’m no John Kenneth Galbraith but I can figure out the more loans you take out to pay your bills, the more broke you really are. Someday soon JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and the other 29 owners of MLB are going get fed up and chase the Wilpon’s like Colangelo chased Looie Dumps in A Bronx Tale. It infuriates the shit out of me that the Skill Sets just keep adding debt on to debt and insist on feeding us a line of horseshit about the minority owners who will be riding down Roosevelt Avenue on white horse with millions of dollars in their saddle bags to save them. The Wilpon’s are beyond saving. There are some outstanding people who work for the New York Mets and I have had the privilege of meeting them. From the media relations folks and the marketing and ticket sales and services people who work unbelievably hard at their jobs trying to sell the Mets brand on and off the field, when you see how hard they work and how long a day they put in, you get a tremendous appreciation into what goes into running a major league sports team, a job that would be tough enough in this city without all the turmoil that ownership is presently enduring.

So as the hate wears of that’s when the love starts, as I mention I love how the folks who work for the team do their jobs and do so with pride and professionalism, especially Danielle Parrillo, Director of Communications and Shannon Forde, Director of Media Relations.  I love hanging around with my fellow Mets bloggers at the events we get invited to. We all come from diverse backgrounds as Mets fans and bloggers and we all write from different angles but we all have one main thing in common, we love the Mets and want this organization to succeed.

As ridiculous as this may seem, I have some compassion for the Skill Sets. Yesterday I was venting to one of the Mets front office folks on how I wish the Wilpon’s would just sell and get the hell out of my Mets fan life. The response I got was “Fred and Jeff would sell their homes and live in Citi Field if that was the only way they could keep the team”.  As we finished up our Q & A with Sandy Alderson, as he was leaving our group I went over to him to ask what he thought would happen on the season finale of “Homeland”, as we chatted about what we thought the biggest cliffhanger would be, none other than Jeff Wilpon joined us. That’s right me, Sandy Alderson and Jeff Wilpon. Whoda thunk it? Wilpon was asking us about the show as he’d never seen it so we discussed the premises of it with him. When our little quorum broke up, I looked over at Jeff and said to myself how sad and beaten down the guy looked. I thought back to what was told to me about how he and his father would sell everything to keep this team but the look and demeanor of the guy was of one who knew the end was near. For the first time ever, I felt sorry for him, well maybe for a minute. You and I know this will not end well for the Skill Sets. I’ve yet to read anything from people who are savvy in dealing with all this financial information (your main guy for this should be Howard Megdal, in fact if the Skill Sets were smart they’d hire Howard as a consultant to help them figure out an exit strategy here)  on how the Wilpon’s can save their ownership of the team and with John Harper’s piece in the NY Daily News today you can see it will be sooner more than later when the Skill Sets will have to surrender control of the Mets.

When that day happens I won’t be rejoicing. I’ll be happy that they will have to sell and that an owner with capital will come in (I am just very very nervous about Cablevision and  Jim Dolan buying the team) and hopeful it will lift the pall that sits stagnant over Citi Field but I’ll feel a bit sad for the Wilpon’s as this will be a crushing blow to them, losing the Mets. See I’m not a total prick.

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