Meet the Me$$

This Mets story with Bernie Madoff is getting dirtier and more interesting by the day. And as a Yankee fan, I find it hilarious. When it was first reported that the Mets were involved, everyone assumed that they had lost money but now it looks like they actually profited throughout the course of the deal. Now Irving Picard, the trustee assigned to regain money for the victims of the Ponzi scheme, is suing Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz for upwards of $1 billion (with a b!) for failing to realize that their gains were misbegotten.

 
Here's where I have to stand up for the Mets. They haven't had any idea what's going on for 10 years. How were the supposed to figure out that Madoff was a scam? From letting Steve Phillips win the war with Bobby V to the Beltran strikeout in 2006, collapse in 2007, Tony Bernazard incident, and Jose Reyes spending 3 months on the DL with a boo boo, it's clear that nobody is minding the Mets store. If they couldn't figure out that Ollie Perez was a bad signing, they weren't going to figure out Madoff.  Now it looks like they might have to sell part of the team. Not only that, but even David Wright admits that the Mets can't spend as much money and nobody's going to want to come to the team with a questionable ownership just like nobody wants to go to the Dodgers. Coming off a 79-83 season and with tons of question marks and new management in place, the Madoff controversy is unfortunately the biggest addition the Mets made in the offseason. Just know that as silly as it looks now at how close the Wilpons and Katz were with Bernie Madoff, there was no way they saw this coming. But that's part of the larger problem.