You may have heard the Mets announced some new uniform changes for 2015 this morning… Well whoop-dee-freaking-doo… There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned uniform tweak to excite the masses and get them to closet their old jerseys and buy some new ones. Cha-ching…
If they really want to excite me in November, how about they tweak our dysfunctional ownership group and make some real positive changes to their entire dilapidated operation?
It may not be as deadly as Ebola, but the Mets have their own self-concocted virus spreading like wildfire all over the city… It’s called “fan apathy” and true New Yorkers are the ones at greatest risk. Is there a cure, sure there is, it’s a specially designed antidote specially designed to kill and stop apathy dead in its tracks – winning.
No matter how hard I tried to enjoy the moment last night, as me and a group of Met fans watched Juan Lagares win his first Gold Glove, the excitement was short-lived. Eventually any positive sentiments were all forgotten and washed ashore by a sea of uncertainty surrounding the state of the team.
“Things are so f**king bad that everything is now so predictable with this team,” my friend Mark said. “Daniel Murphy is set to make $8 million, so they’ll have to trade him. Melky Cabrera and Michael Cuddyer got qualifying offers, so much for that idea. Matt Kemp and Joey Bautista make too much money, they’re off the table. It’s so sickening.”
Brian: “I want to know how we’re going to keep all this great young pitching a few years from now when Harvey, deGrom, Wheeler and Thor will be making $25-30 million instead of $2 million? Where’s all the money coming from when those four will be ready for their $75-100 million extensions? And don’t forget we’ll still be paying Wright his $20 million a year. What do we do then? We blow it all up and rebuild again?”
Mark: “It all feels like a big scam, like they’re conning us. I don’t know how you trust them knowing you have those money-grabbing thugs owning the team”
Joe D: “Where the hell did you get the idea that I trust them? What are you f**king nuts? The mere thought of them nauseates me to no end. You think I don’t realize it’s all a big dog and pony show? ”
I think you could figure out how the rest of the night evolved. It’s so difficult to get excited about the future when you can’t trust the ones responsible for delivering it.
And my buddy Brian asks the real question – the question nobody wants to think about right now – how will a team full of young stars stay together once they get into the arbitration years which occurs in their third or second big league season? Already in Kansas City they are faced with the bleak reality of needing to trade Alex Gordon because they can’t afford him. And that’s a team with a higher payroll than us.
Honestly, I try not to think about it because life’s too short. So I try to dwell on Mets news as it happens rather than looking 2-3 years ahead and trying to figure out how the math is going to work. The numbers just don’t add up and it’s pretty scary.
And this explains my animosity toward Fred and Jeff Wilpon. This is why we can’t go more than five days on MMO without reminding you just how dire the ownership situation is. Everything with them is just a money grab. They don’t care about winning a championship like we do. All they want is a team that appears to look like a better than .500 team so that they can get more of your fannies to fill the seats at Ebbets err Citi Field.
As for all these gimmicks, sideshows and promotions, there’s only one sure fire cure for fan apathy and as I mentioned above it’s rather simple – winning. But good luck trying to sell that to the Wilpons.
