A rebuttal to yesterday’s thoughts that some fans are kidding themselves.
Choose The Mets With Not Choosing The Wilpons Works
By Charles M Hollon
To be able to see both sides of a situation is very important. For me personally, it is a vital part of my work, life and well sports teams. Shannon Shark has been gracious enough to allow another side of a situation to be spoken on his website and what a fine website, Mets Police is.
Before I write one word is written about Choose The Mets and Not The Wilpons. Confession time…as to where Choose The Mets actually came from.
Mark Healey is the On-Line for Baseball Digest actually coined the tag, the Not The Wilpons part which was added by myself.
Mark and Shannon actually got into this very discussion several months ago and I have purposely not gone back and re-read what they wrote so you won’t have to hear an old “Everyone Loves Raymond” show for the sake of anyone repeating themselves.
Choose The Mets and Not The Wilpons means to love the team as much as you always have.
It means respect the good points of what the franchise has accomplished on the field and off the field as well.
The Not The Wilpons part is actually very simple. The Wilpons hold or have a held a public trust.
That public trust is our New York Mets.
The New York Mets will be around long after Shannon, myself and the Wilpons are long gone.
They are not the New York Mets.
Shannon actually pens that theory doesn’t work. But in truth it actually already has. He reacted and you, the audience is already reacting.
In a very big way.
Mind you, I’ve never messaged or tweeted Shannon not to go to games or stop promoting the product that the Wilpons have served to you
the public. Heck, even writing about this, shows you the love for the Mets we both have.
Choose The Mets. Not The Wilpons.
The statement is actually based on making your voice heard. In whatever way *you* feel is best.
I actually base it on something that you might have heard of, democracy. You the audience, the paying public, have a voice. Whether its based on buying tickets, a jersey or a not supporting a sponsor.
We are conditioned as a society to react to certain things. Some of those things include, love, sex and the almighty dollar.
One of those very things are something the Wilpons know a great
deal about, money. They want your entertainment dollar. They want you to come out to the stadium that Jeff Wilpon designed and Fred Wilpon outfitted to pay homage to his childhood team, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
They will try and separate you from your dollar anyway they can.
There is nothing wrong with that.
They are in a business, a very competitive one for your dollar.
To eliminate the team completely from your daily passage of summer would be silly and you would be only hurting yourself or your family of the greatest game ever invented.
Personally I normally like the big picture. As what was accurately portrayed in the fine book, “Wilpon’s Folly’ By Howard Megdal, the debt that the Wilpon’s have accrued is far greater than what any of us can affect with our purchases or lack their of.
However in this great crazy democracy of ours – we all deserve a voice, a vote if you will.
The Wilpon’s will not run for the election of anything, at least from what I can tell, anything you or I can vote in. Choose The Mets Not The Wilpons is your vote, it’s my vote, it’s our voices. Voices, from one of the most loyal fan bases that exist in our game today.
How else can you react to what many feel has become a running joke of a once proud franchise?
Ask yourself, if you go into a resturaunt and find the food bad or the service, what do you do?
Do you speak up or do you ask for another plate?
For the sake of Shannon and some of you who might like to go over the finer points of what was written, let’s go over a few things.
Shark in his posting spoke of how you can no longer watch SNY, because the Wilpons own the controlling interest in it. Since I dont pay nor do you write a check to the Wilpons for viewing SNY or watching a Met broadcast. Feel free to watch if you decide to or not.
If you choose not to patronize the sponsors, that is a vote and a choice that you make. That effects the Wilpons, not you watching or not.
National broadcasts? The dollars or cents depending who listen to that the Wilpons make on those broadcasts have already been spent.
Actually, the amount of debt owned shows you poorly of a business model the Wilpons have built.
So feel free to cozy up to Jack Buck’s voice (is
that possible?)
Ratings? Shannon, Im surprised at you. The Nielson Rating Company complies ratings in two ways. Well, let them tell you….
“Their viewing is measured by our TV meters and Local People Meters which capture information on what’s being viewed and when and, in the major U.S. markets, specifically who and how many are watching. Additionally, we collect more than two million paper diaries from across the country each year during “sweeps.”
So if you do have a set-top-box, your voting on something the Wilpons can benefit from or if you do get a diary from these fine folks. If you aren’t in one of those lucky catorgies, feel free to watch or not watch.
Again, its up to you.
Radio? For those that know me, this is almost as easy as downing a square from L & B www.SpumoniGardens.com (thats a free plug, maybe they will advertise Shannon!).
Radio listenership is based on a two ways. One is named Arbitron, the other is named PPM (Portable People Meters). Arbitron uses hand-written diaries while PPM relies on a device that tracks your listening.
In most cases you would know or should know that your listening is being tracked.
Ever know of anyone who has/had one? Me neither.
Again, patronizing or not Mets sponsors of either radio or TV is up to you.
As for the employees of the New York Metropolitans, the ones who have been already been let go, I truly am sorry. My hope and thoughts go out to all of you in that you have already found new employment.
As for those who might suffer a similar fate due to the bad business decisions by your CEO, Fred Wilpon, I wish I could personally hire all of you.
No one hard-working person in our economy deserves to lose a job today.
Bad business decisions can effect everyone, they normally hurt the little guy before the big guy has to go.
So, please understand Choose The Mets Not The Wilpons is a choice, your choice, your vote.
If you don’t vote, your missing out on one of the great parts of our great game and our country.
Mets Police is a fine website. Shannon and company have done a fine job in getting for the most part a tone-deaf front office to hear basic requests of fans. I do believe the site is there for reasons not to criticize but to make you think or remember or even to advocate for things this current ownership decided you didnt anymore.
I thank him for allowing my voice to be heard.
Choose The Mets Not The Wilpons.
Arbitron is written in a diary at the end of each week.
Personal People Meters are run by Arbitron. The problem with them is that it doesn’t just pick up what you are listening to. If you walk by my car and I am listening to WFAN then that means it got picked up by the PPM and then if you walk by another car you might pick up Z-100. So you might not know if you are being tracked or not.
I get this also and I have been in that frame of mind for the past few months. I am not buying my Spring Training season tickets this year, nor am I buying any five game packs.
I am going to buy my seats from a secondary market or a fan outside the stadium the day of the game.
I will not be buying any food or concession items from the MEts while I attend the games and I will not be parking in their parking lot and giving them money to park.
My reason for this is that they are RASING SPRING TRAINING TICKET PRICES! They want to cut back on their expenitures and expect you to pay more!
They are charging you major league prices, yet you are forced to watch a AA team on the field.
I’m surprised in either case this has come down to ratings either on TV or Radio. Having read both sides of this somewhat Orwellian Baseball nightmare we are all living through as Met fans, it really boils down to the simple fact, are these individuals who own the Mets fit to be doing so from a financial standpoint? I’d argue no, and that MLB has a fairly selective “you are in, you are out” policy.
As Mark Healy will attest to, I have given the Wilpons more than their fair share benefit of the doubt over the years. Any fan whose pulse is still moving that read the Mets organization “warning” to R.A. Dickey should be alarmed at this point. It does not take a genius to see that even in the most charitable of instances, the sad state of affairs with the NY Mets is that their ownership was laying the PR groundwork in the event Mr. Dickey were to hurt himself on his journey. And while they very well might have that right given his contract (I don’t know, have not seen the deal myself) only people desperate and lacking focus or any discernible conscience would actually produce and disseminate that information at this point in time. Right or wrong it comes across as “we’ll take what we can get back.”
The Emperor has not clothes. It is time to buy him some and then politely ask that he give up the charade and move on.
I think with RA they were just positioning themselves in case of injury. Not a big deal.