Well, Freddy Skill Sets came pretty close to being truthful with the fan base when he was interviewed by Brain Costa of the WSJ. Fred was in Arizona (wow Bolt goes to Phoenix?) for the quarterly owners meeting.  When asked about his financial struggle and the toll it is taking on him, the Mets organization and its fan base, Freddy Sez:

“How could anybody deny that it’s been a challenging time?” Wilpon said. “But I came from nothing. I meet the challenges. So does Saul and Jeff and our whole family. We’re meeting the challenges and I think we’ll be fine.”

“I think we’ll be fine”? Really?  How so Freddy ? What’ch ya keepin’ on the down low from us? The new minority shares are a band aid on a gaping wound but you know what, maybe the Skill Sets luck is changing as his Guardian Angel, Bud Selig is staying on for 2 more years as baseball czar and Wilpon enabler and as always has Freddy’s back:

“He’s been a great owner,” Selig said. “Loves his team. He’s everything you’d want in a local owner. He’s had some economic problems, not caused by himself, and I have a lot of faith in him that he’s working his way through them.”

And he’s oh, so good,

And he’s oh, so fine,

And he’s oh, so healthy,

In his body and his mind.

He’s a well respected man about town,

Doing the best things so conservatively.

Then Freddy was asked about Jose Reyes and his thoughts on Reyes:

“Reyes was 17 years old when I met him,” Wilpon said. “He spoke pretty good English at that time, too. He said to me, ‘Can you give me some advice?’ I said, ‘Yeah, never wipe that smile off your face.’”

Humm, “never wipe that smile off your face” looks like Freddy eats at Wo Hop like I do. Thankfully for Reyes’ sake Freddy didn’t hit him up with “Kid, I know a guy who can make you rich beyond belief”

Here is a nice picture on a rainy, windy, cold New York afternoon

Years before we would get to the 50^th Anniversary of the NY Mets, Dana Brand was all pumped up about putting together a symposium at Hofstra University where he taught, on the history of the Mets. As you all know Dana passed away last year but his dream of having a conference at Hofstra will become a reality on April 26-28. Please check out all the details here and hopefully we can all meet up at Hofstra that weekend and celebrate not just the legacy of the NY Mets but of Dana Brand as well.

Steve Popper, the Mets beat writer for the Bergen Record is leaving the Mets beat and will become the Records man at MSG following the NY Knickerbockers. Not only is this a big loss for Mets fans but a huge loss for Mets bloggers like myself and other bloggers who have had the privilege of meeting Steve at various team functions. Many of the beat writers and media folk won’t even give us a response to a hello but Popper (as well as Adam Rubin and Kevin Kernan ) has always been friendly to us and has been gracious in sharing his thoughts with us about the Mets. Good luck Steve and thanks.

While other teams add players and their fans converse in real baseball talk, we Mets fans are stuck in a Mets minutia malaise. Such as the club sending R.A. Dickey a cease and desist letter about his climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro for charity.  There is no doubt in my mind that Dickey’s reason for doing this is true and from the heart as he is raising money and awareness to teen sex slave trade in third world countries. The problem the Mets have is they have to cover their ass and asset by informing Dickey that if he injures himself and cannot perform is pitching duties; the Mets will void his contract as they have every right to do. It’s always easy to rip the Mets organization but in this case they are just doing this as protection. I am sure they wish Dickey waited until he was retired to climb Kilimanjaro and R.A. knows the consequences he will suffer if he’s injured or worse on this trip but he feels that the conviction of doing what’s right and that the plight of young people used as sex slaves against their will is worth the risk.   

I just hope all’s well that ends well with this venture, Dickey scales the mountain and his goal is met and that he returns home in one piece and ready to report to Pt. St. Lonesome on time.

It’s just a matter of time that Citi Field turns into MLB’s version of Grey Gardens. Bloomberg reports that Standard and Poor’s has dropped their rating of bonds issued for the building of Citi Field to negative.  I have visions of walking the concourse of Citi Field next season and seeing Freddy Skill Sets and Uncle Saul in tattered blue blazers, shirts with frayed collars and power ties with soup stains on them stammering like Elmer Fudd saying “I’m Fred Wilpon I own a baseball team and a yacht”

Hopefully by next week we can get back to analyzing bargain basement players signing with the Mets and try to convince ourselves that 2012 will be a really good season for the Mets.

I’m sure most Mets fans are like me when it comes to trying to make sense of the Mets finances in fact most fans talk about finances in pro sports  like it’s a penny ante poker game (what is team A offering $1.2 mil? You know what? Make our offer $2mil even, fans throw $850K around like its $8.50) So it was with great anticipation that I awaited Howard Megdal’s latest tome, “Wilpon’s Folly” (Bloomsbury USA) that not only gives a time line of the events and devastation that Bernie Madoff brought to the Skill Sets and to the Mets franchise but how much of this angst could have been avoid, if the Wilpon’s, specifically Saul Katz listened to confidants they were close to about the warning signs.

Megdal put in exhausting research into this book and gives Mets fans insight into the people who run our beloved New York Mets.  One of the main conclusions I took away with after reading Wilpon’s Folly’s is the Wilpon’s have a hard time taking good advice. They got some very good advice that could have protected themselves and their finances but chose to ignore the warning signs that Madoff was trouble, specifically Saul Katz whose own son, begged for him to diversify from Madoff but Saul Katz had bought into the Madoff way of business hook, line and sinker that has me wonder what goes on in Katz’ mind when he sits and reflects on this calamity.

As you read Wilpon’s Folly you just wonder where is the end game, when does it hit rock bottom for the Wilpon’s and what happens with the Mets when it does. Megdal comes up with a plan that makes sense and makes you wonder if someone close to the Wilpon’s would pitch to them in order to save whatever assets they can.

As much as Freddy Skill Sets wants to be Mets owner for life, that looks like a pipe dream and just goes to show you that Mets fans are “we-be’s” We be here when they got here and We be still here when they’re gone.

Last night I had the privilege to be invited to be part of the Mets bloggers Q & A conference call with Mets GM Sandy Alderson. Eric Simon and the staff at Amazin’ Avenue have done another outstanding job of putting together a transcript of the conference call (click the link and read the whole transcript it will be the most informative information you’ll get about the Mets anywhere) and I thank them very much for undertaking the chore of transcribing and crediting each blogger with a link to our sites along with our questions, Thanks again Eric.

A few observations I took from the call:

Alderson is playing his hand in the Jose Reyes sweepstakes like a top poker player. In years past, the Mets were always duped into not just setting the market price on free agents but bidding against themselves. His answer to the question on whether he thought of Reyes as a franchise player was 100 % spot on:

Do I consider him a franchise player? Yes. But a franchise player is only valuable as such if he is contributing to a winning franchise as opposed to simply acting as eye wash for a team that is not very good.

Again, everybody loves Reyes and wants him to be a Met For Life, yet less than 5,000 fans showed up on the final day of the season and what may have been Reyes last game as a Met. That’s why Alderson doesn’t play to the lunatic fringe of Metsfandom and for that I am so grateful.

Alderson got into the business end of running the Mets as Howard Megdal, who should be your go to read with the anything Mets related but most certainly on learning the financial end of what the Skill Sets and the organization are up against in these trying money times with the Mets. It may a bit simplistic on my part but it seems Alderson is saying that he has x-amount of dollars in his budget given to him by ownership and he has to do the best he and his staff can to fill the roster with players good enough to compete and not hurt the bedrock of foundation of the organization, the farm system. There are some (I’d say a minority) of Mets fans who don’t get the fact that finances of this franchise are in a total state of flux but no matter the outcome, it would take either a discovery of oil or gold during the renovation of the Citi Field outfield for the Skill Sets to own this team for the long term.  

I really believe Alderson enjoys doing these Q & A’s with the Mets bloggers more than dealing with the MSM. The first one we did last year lasted about half an hour, then when we met with Alderson face to face at the Mets Holiday Party he joined us in our own little group for more questions and didn‘t seem to be in a hurry to get away from us. Last night he spoke to us for an hour and seemed to enjoy the questions and giving us insight into what he and his staff are doing to making the Mets into a top flight franchise.

His answer to my question was about that, he is hell-bent in turning around the perception of the NY Mets franchise, as much as Alderson feels there has been progress in that direction he knows the only way to advance it is for him to put together a winning team:

{Steve Keane (The Eddie Kranepool Society): Your first year as a Mets general manager, how would you assess your progress that you and your staff have made in the first year with the Mets? What has been the most challenging situation or thing that’s happened with you as the GM of the Mets, and what’s been the biggest surprise on the positive side and on the negative side?

Alderson: I look at things in three areas. The organization as a whole, the infrastructure, what’s happening in player development and scouting, and what’s happening at the major league level.

Organizationally, I’m very pleased with where we are. We’re not fully where we want to be. In the areas of structure and process and personnel, we’re making a lot of progress. We made some personnel changes last year, we’ve made a few this year. The more important changes organizationally have come in the area of process as we blend the pre-existing staff with newly added staff. From an organizational standpoint, we’ve made some progress.

Player-development-wise, we’ve made significant progress, I think our approach to the draft last year was a departure from previous years, and I think at least early returns are that it was a positive change. If you look at our top prospects, we were able to add to that list not only from not only the further development of existing players, but also from the draft as well as the trade, most prominently the trade for Zack Wheeler. I think player-development-wise, the continued development of Matt Harvey and some others, and remember at this time last year, Matt Harvey had never thrown a professional pitch. I think some very positive things are happening at the player development and scouting level.

At the major league level, I’m very pleased with Terry Collins last year and I think our major league staff will be even stronger this year than it was. Dave Hudgens did a great job in refocusing our offensive philosophy. I think we’ve made a lot of progress philosophically at least in how we are approaching the game, not just in respect to hitting, but a more aggressive approach, a more accountable approach that Terry has demanded.

If you tie those three things together, what I’d hoped to achieve in the first year primarily was to change the perception of the organization. Despite the fact that we didn’t finish over .500, I think overall, the way the team played, some of the other things that happened over the course of the year, did help to change the perception of the organization and its direction and its chances of success in the future.

My biggest disappointment going back to last year was just the way we finished the season. We finished poorly, we started poorly. Part of that was attributable to injury, but some of it was a result of weakening the team later for long-term benefit. I think for example, if we’d kept Frankie Rodriguez, we would have finished well over .500. I think that the lack of a closer cost us a number of games.

But, the overall perception did change. I think that there is some greater confidence in the future for the Mets and that was an important thing to accomplish. I think the way we finished detracted from that somewhat, I think we were able to move people’s thinking in that direction.}

I’d like to thank Danielle Parillo and Shannon Forde for putting this and all the Mets bloggers event together and of course a big thank you to Sandy Alderson for his time and insight    

I thought I’d look at some of the Mets news of the day before I start reading more into the new CBA that seems to have those who follow amateur baseball and player development up in arms with how many restrictions there will be on clubs when it comes to drafting players from the June entry draft and players from the International player pool.

It figures when the Mets have made it their mission statement to invest in the draft and in cultivating home grown talent that these new restrictive rules go into effect.

If we see Adam Lowden roaming the outfield of Citi Field in 2012, it won’t be a good sign.

Jose Reyes finished 11^th in MVP voting, to me that does not translate into a 6yr/$120 mil player

Jerry Seinfeld just got a dog and he named him Jose after Jose Reyes, he’s a cute little dog but he’s no Shamsky. By the way why can’t celebrity Mets fans like Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Matthew Broderick, Ray Romano, Kevin James, Chris Rock to name a few form a syndicate and buy out the Skill Sets?

That’s it for today and until Friday unless Bernie Madoff sends Freddy Skill Sets a note from the big house on where he buried the missing millions he pilfered (I have a vision of the boardwalk at Brighton Beach as a starting point) and the Mets announce the signing of Reyes,  Albert Pujols , Mark Buehrle and C.J. Wilson if not enjoy your Thanksgiving, put your worrying about the Mets on the back burner and look around the table at dinner and give thanks for those who are with you and remember those who aren’t.

A few quick hits as my workload is piling up and next week is a real shorty for me:

I guess I’m numb to MLB screwing with the game that I’m not upset over the adding of a second wild card, maybe as soon as this coming season. In fact as a Mets fan, I should be ecstatic about it as it gives the team a better chance to reach the organizations goal of “meaningful games in September”.

 I would even go further even further with the destruction of what was once sacred the 162 games season and a true league champion, and abolish the division structure and make two 15 team leagues and have the first 8 teams make the playoffs. I guess it’s the NHL/ (defunct) NBA fan in me that would like to see this. Cut the season to 148 or 150 games and start 1 plays 8, 2 play 7 and so on, 7 game series.  You’d have to have a balanced schedule, which  you should anyway with a wild card spot in play, and with 15 teams per league, there has to be an interleague game every day. Hey can’t have anything but anything that gets the Mets closer to a post season berth gets my vote.  

Check out Ed “Rusty Jr.” at the Real Dirty Mets as he has posted video of the Mets bloggers talking with Howie Rose and David Wright.

I guess you heard that the Skill Sets have seven investors lined up to buy a minority share of the club for $20 mil. I am proud to say I have inquired about buying in and have 20 of these bills ready for delivery to get my piece of the Mets pie.  NYUCK! NYUCK! NYUCK!

As we get closer to Thanksgiving I just want to say how thankful I am that I am not a fan of the NY Jets. Being a Mets fan is agonizing enough but I really feel for the Mets/Jets fan of which they are plentiful. With that said, Dirty Sanchez sucks, Rex needs to shut the fuck up and Brian Schottenheimer makes the awful Kevin Gilbride look like Vince Lombardi in his heyday as NY Giants OC.  By the way, for all the insults hurled at Tim Teabow, he may not be a work of art and statistically unimpressive but the results are there as the Broncos are tied for the AFC West lead with Oakland. Who’da think it Teabow in the playoffs and Dirty Sanchez on the couch.

It’s getting harder to post anything about the Mets because every time I start to write a post this song pops in my head.  Every day, all day it’s Reyes and Wright, Wright and Reyes. Reyes to the Marlins or the Brewers or the Giants anywhere but the Mets. Trade Wright, Pay Wright, Bring the fences in for Wright on and on it’s the Mets fan/media version of waterboarding.

It seems there is a segment of Mets fans out there that cannot see the Shake Shake   for the chop shops, it has not sunk into the skulls of a segment of the Flushing congregation that the family who owns our beloved Mets are close to broke and have no clue how to raise capital to run the franchise nor do they trust anyone outside their inner circle to bring in as partners. The Skill Sets are the Amish of MLB.

It is these same clueless fans who think Sandy Alderson owns the team. It escapes their pea brains that the GM can only spend what is allotted to him in a budget and even if he had an unlimited budget he still would not spend it like a clueless dolt (ladies and gentlemen  how about a hand for Omar Minaya).

The Mets are up shit’s creek for a few reasons, first, Bernie Madoff got caught and the funny money from his Ponzi scheme that fuled the franchise coffers are gone. Second, the legal fees alone are ruining the Skill Sets, sharks lawyers don’t work for free and I’m sure the shysters are livin’ large on the Skill Sets dole, third, The Skill Sets are selfish bastards who should sell the team but are hanging on for their dear self-centered life with an assist from Uncle Bud.  All in all it makes for a huge mess. The mess was inherited by Sandy Alderson, a man who knows how to clean up such messes, the problem is this mess is beyond sweeping and moping it’s a real industrial strength mess that may take a while to clean up.

Mets  fans want to be told that the franchise is in rebuild mode. Well, since some of you can’t figure it out by reading all the clues you’ve been given, I’ll let you in on the Skill Sets dirty little secret, the team is in rebuild mode.

First it will be letting Jose Reyes depart, unless of course he’ll take a 4yr/$75-$80 mil deal. He won’t. Next it will be David Wright departing. The fences of Citi Field were brought in so Wright can get back on the offensive track so he will be quite desirable to other teams come the trade deadline, this is fatting up the hog for slaughter.  Same deal with Johan Santana, Alderson and company are hoping he comes back like the old Johan so maybe there is a team who would take on his bloated contract to make a post season run. In order to deal off Jason Bay it will take a cocktail of strong narcotics or snapshots of a GM mating with an animal to get that done.

Let me give you folks a dose of reality, the Mets will not contend in 2012 in fact 2012 has a chance to be worse than 2011. So you can make your plans now, either hang in and ride out the storm the next season or jump ship and find another team to root for. In fact all you Jose Reyes groupies can flock to the team that he signs with since your allegiance is more to the players than to the team.

Me? I’ll hang with the organization, the same organization I take to task on what seems to be a daily basis but can’t ever think of turning my back on. It’s going to be a long summer at Citi Field but I’ll still be there rooting for whoever puts on the Mets uniform because to me it makes no difference who owns the team. I look at like this, I was here before the Skill Sets and I’ll be here after the Skill Sets but what has me seeing at least a glimmer of light at the end of the Cliff Floyd Tunnel is I believe Sandy Alderson has a plan and he feels the plan will pay off. I guess I need to hang my hopes on something.

This whole changing of the walls at Citi Field has me a bit perplexed to a point of being a bit pissed off. While I agree with lowering the height of the outfield walls to eight feet, which they should have been when the park was first built, it seems the lowering of the walls and bringing them in a bit closer to home plate is because some of the Mets starting eight have been traumatized by the outfield dimensions. According to Pitching Coach Old School Warthen, his pitchers “got a bit lazy” due to the vast pasture of the Citi Field outfield that they had a hard time pitching in a place like Citizen’s Bank or even the Mall of The South Bronx.  What all this tells me is this team collectively is mentally weak and the pitching coach has no idea how to do his job.

I’ve always been a card carrying member of the David Wright Fan Club but his constant crying about the Citi Field dimensions have me wondering if I want to renew my membership. Same with Jason Bay, I was never a fan of his as his signing was just another example of the damage Omar Minaya and Jeffey Skill Sets did to this organization. So now that the fences have been moved in and the walls lowered (I guess it is perfectly clear now that Citi Field was badly planed and put together between the skyscraper outfield walls, the lack of a Mets-eccentric feel and the whole homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers that was met with Mets fans ire) there should be no excuse for Wright and Bay to not have monster seasons in 2012. Right? Wright?

As for Warthen his quote :

“We got into being a little bit mentally lazy and overly secure. … I think that caused a lot of the homers this year. I really do. …[The new dimensions] will help us focus and concentrate and not be so ready to go out there and throw a fastball away and hope they hit it to center field.”

As the pitching coach shouldn’t you have nipped this problem in the bud ? By saying this out loud didn’t you realize that you are just feeding into the frenzy of many Mets fans (this one included) that you have no clue on how to fix this staff and should have been relieved of your duties this off season? It’s quotes like this that make me wonder if it’s Warthen fault that Bobby Parnell, he of the Howitzer arm, had no clue on how to pitch? Same with Mike Pelfrey. Pelf has talent and his a big strong workhorse of a pitcher is that Old School can’t or doesn’t know how to tap into what it takes to make both pitchers the dominate arms we feel they can be?

Jeffey Skill Sets says, not to worry about whom and when these minority shareholders of the Mets come on board. Besides it’s none of your business:

“Some of the people don’t want to be public,” Wilpon said. “Some of the people might never be public. I don’t think anybody knows all the minority shareholders in each of the other teams. Do you know all the minority shareholders in Atlanta or Kansas City or St. Louis, Cincinnati, the Yankees? It’s just not widely known.”

Do I care who holds a minority share in the Braves, Royals, Cardinals or the Bronx Bastards? No, because I don’t root or spend my money on tickets and merchandise on those teams but I do on the Mets. See I want to know as a Mets fan/customer what financial resources the team has to improve the product they are selling to me and my fellow Mets fans. I’m not going to pay Broadway prices for a high school production.  This is just another example of this ownership having not a clue of how to treat or connect with its fan base.

I’ve never been a big fan of Halloween maybe it was because the neighborhood I grew up in was more about ducking flying eggs or avoiding getting jumped by guys with socks full of chalk (usually pulling a knife on the sock hopper curtailed those attacks) than collecting candy but Ed “Rusty Jr.” Marcus went to a Mets Halloween Party last night and saw some interesting costumes. Oh and by the way Ed, the image of you in KISS makeup is disturbing.

Now that the World Series is over and we are getting out our snow shovels (WHAT?) it’s time for the Hot Stove to rev up and of course the first order of business will be the signing or non-signing of Jose Reyes. Sandy Alderson will handle the negotiation with the team coming first and the fan base second. For those of you who clamor for Reyes back at any price, haven’t we gone down that road of destruction too many times in Flushing ? The days of winning the tabloid back pages in the winter are over. Of course I want to see Reyes back as the Mets shortstop but not at a ridiculous price. I’m more concerned about the years than I am the money. Four years, I’m fine with five would have to be an option with incentives; six would be thank you for your years of service Jose.

The Highlanders were smart to sign a 1 year extension with WCBS 880 for the rights to broadcast their games on radio. The Met deal on WFAN is up after this season and I’d bet anything that WFAN wants those Highlander games badly.  That’s fine by me as that would then conclude me from being a WFAN listener ever again. As it is now, I turn on the station out of boredom or just tired of listening to music at work.

If I were the owner of a MLB team I’d be pissed with Bud Selig today as he stated the deadbeat Skill Sets have not paid off their $25 mil loan to MLB. I wonder what Frank McCourt has to say about that. Call it BuddyCare.

After the news broke yesterday about the NY Mets Third Annual Adjustment of Ticket Prices, I got an e-mail inviting me to a conference call with Mets Executive VP of Business Operation, David Howard to ask questions about the new dynamic pricing on Mets tickets. As most of you know, I’m not a fan of Howard’s and from what I hear the feeling is mutual. After last night’s conference call nothing has change in our relationship.

Howard started the call by reiterating what was in the press release where the organization has scraped its Platinum, Gold, Silver, Tin Can tier pricing to a new pricing program where Mets tickets will be priced like a commodity. Just like gold, silver and pork bellies (the Skill Sets have really morphed into the Duke brothers   ) the price of a Mets ticket will now be set by market demand, however there is one caveat, there is a minimum price a ticket will go for and it will be what a season ticket holder paid for their ticket, which is fair as the organization is protecting its best customer. Ah,  but this being the Mets there always a “read the fine print” moment  and in this case it’s giving season ticket holders a deadline of November 7^th to make a payment to commit to 2012 season tickets. This is a full  month earlier than usual and as Howard Megdal points out right at the time teams can have exclusive negotiating rights with its own free agents.  The Mets fan cynic in me says this means that there is no way the club will resign Jose Reyes and  they want to make sure those who hold season tickets  make an early commitments  before they can decide if a Reyes-less Mets team is one they want to invest their discretionary income.

I’m not a season ticket holder but I did at one time buy partial plans but with different commitments and such, I decided to buy game tickets when I know I’m free to go to games. So under this plan I will have to play Russian Roulette Mets style to buy my tickets. The price of tickets will vary as to who the opponent is and if the team is in contention or an also ran. So a seat for a game against the San Diego Padres on a Monday night in September will  a whole lot less than a game against the Highlanders on a June Friday night.  Classic supply and demand.

The question I posed to Howard was about all the seats with no ass’s in them behind home plate and how watching the current post season games from Citizen Bank Park, Comerica Park and Rangers Ballpark where there are real good old fashion baseball seats with fans in them as opposed to Citi Field where fans would rather sip Chardonnay and talk about how happy they are that the financial intuition they work for is sucking the country’s economy dry, than watch a baseball game. So courtesy of Amazin’ Avenue, who has done a fantastic job of transcribing the conference call (a big tip of the Mets cap to Chris McShanne and James Kannengieser )  here is my question and Howard’ response:

Steve Keane, Ed Kranepool Society: This is the 3rd year in a row that the organization has revamped its ticket program and it seems like the organization has a problem reading its fan base. Watching these postseason games, especially games at Citizens Bank Ballpark, Comerica and Arlington, you see the seats behind home plate are regular stadium seats, whereas at Citi Field they have these big expensive luxury seats. Has there ever been any thought of taking those seats out by the Champions Club, and putting in seats where fans will actually sit in those seats during games.

DH: The Champions Club is behind home plate but not immediately behind home plate on the field level. It’s actually technically off of the field level concourse. They sit above the Sterling Seats. With regards to the Champions Club in particular, we are actually changing that club and making it an all-inclusive club. While the prices are essentially remaining constant, there is going to be complimentary food and non-alcoholic beverages served.

I think in regards to the Delta Club, which is the club that’s on camera from the center field view during games, those are upholstered theater-style seats. They are very comfortable. They are a premium seat. They are basically sold out. Again, you may not see people sitting in those seats all the time. They may be in the club, they may be in the back, they may not be there. Those seats are sold, so we don’t have any plans at this point to change those. What happens is that the team starts to win more, it gets more exciting; people will be in those seats on an increased basis.

So in essence, who gives a shit if someone is sitting in the seats, THEY’RE PAID FOR!!!! And they are sold out (I guess those were the tickets that sold like “hotcakes” last season) Howard’s thinking is we can get the corporate suit here to wine and dine during games but it’s you annoying Mets fans with your rent and mortgages and families to take care of and on top of that insisting on having a winning team that we need to buy tickets.  There has to be some bloodline between David Howard and M.Donald Grant .