Forbes sure came out swinging. I think this is how most fans feel, however I maintain none of us (you, me, other bloggers, reporters) really know what’s going on.
Wilpon and Katz are done. Finished. The two will soon be out of baseball entirely.
The Mets franchise as we have known it since Nelson Doubleday and Wilpon bought the team in 1986, is dead. There are two causes of this fatality: One, Wilpon forgot his primary duty as a team owner was to produce a quality product that, in baseball’s biggest market, was self-sustaining. He had that obligation. Instead, he used the team as an ATM to earn high returns from a dubious fund manager and his cable channel to pay himself a leveraged dividend.
More via Forbes
Also (Goon may have covered this the other day but it didn’t register in my brain) in another article Forbes says the Mets need to make $30 million in 2011 in order just to make debt payments. And I think I read they lost money last year. Very confusing but it’s like a train wreck, you have to look.
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After the Super Bowl sing by for a special How I Met The Mets. This one takes place in 2008 and is better and longer than the first two. It’s How I Met The Mets: Last Game at Shea.
We don’t know what’s going on, but we do see the fraud of a team they put on the field and the joke of a price they charge for tickets. That’s right there in plain sight, so anything on top of that wouldn’t be surprising at all.
Chief, I think the Wilpons will own the team for a year tops. They better sell now while they can. If they don’t, the longer it goes the tougher it will be to get fair value. Just pray they do not sell to the Dolans.
That kind of doom and gloom that Forbes peddles is essentially fear mongering. While I’m not disputing that the Wilpons are fighting for their financial survival (which, by extension, determines whether they can afford to maintain an MLB franchise), I’m pretty much convinced they won’t sell a majority stake until this lawsuit is over. The minority stake sale is just to pay the bills while the suit is pending. We just won’t know what will become of the Wilpons until they get their day in court.