I am convinced there will be a resurgence for my beloved Mets someday, but given the current gloomy situation, I can be forgiven for thinking that someday may be long in coming. The latest dustup, with team owner Fred Wilpon taking pokes at several of his star players in a New Yorker magazine article, is just one more unseemly moment in a bad stretch for my Flushing heroes that has gone on now for several years.
It’s almost beside the point that there’s a good deal of truth to what he said about Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and David Wright: it was ill advised to say it and needlessly adds additional controversy to a ball club mired in enough confusion and mishap already.
In Wilpon’s case, here’s a guy who allowed his fortunes to get ensnared with the most prodigious con man of the last 100 years: Bernie Madoff. As the club’s dreary day-to-day saga unfolds with Madoff looming like an unshakable specter, Wilpon’s jab at his three stars seems ill timed, to say the very least. But not necessarily off base.
I remember after Beltran had that incredible postseason in 2004 as an Astro against the Braves and the Cardinals thinking, my God, my Metsies are showering him with $120 million based on that one nutty postseason. It seemed ridiculous at the time, and though he had a couple of great seasons, injuries and simply bad Flushing karma have combined to make Wilpon’s assessment of Beltran an accurate one. He is grossly overpaid, and it apparently makes little difference that the disastrous move came on Wilpon’s watch.
About the same time that Wilpon probably was anguishing over the Madoff fiasco, the club was beginning the payment of $1.2 million per annum for Bobby Bonilla, who retired 10 years ago. That nifty arrangement will take place for the next 25 years, which would really make me gag on a Flushing Meadow weenie at the ballpark if I thought that a portion of the six or seven bucks was going toward that particular clunker. So there’s some precedent extant for Mets management to conjure up decidedly less-than-brilliant front office maneuvers.
As for Wright not being a superstar – and Reyes not likely to be receiving Carl Crawford-like money when Reyes becomes a free agent this fall – those two comments have a ring of truth to them as well. Wright has been a damn fine player when healthy, but unless you apply the 21st century pathetically inflated definition of superstar, he hasn’t exactly been that. Reyes will be 28 by the time he tests his ability to claim a $140 million or so contract, and if some MLB club ponies up that kind of dough it will be nothing short of a miracle.
Somewhere, presumably on a beach in Jamaica sipping a cold bottle of Red Stripe beer and munching on some jerked chicken, Bobby Bonilla is giggling, as well he should be.
- T.S. O’Connell
