Wow. I didn’t think it was possible. But alas, this statement from your New York Broke Asses Mets:
“We said in October that we expected to have a short-term liquidity issue. To address this, we did receive a loan from Major League Baseball in November. Beyond that, we will not discuss the matter any further.”
Oh, well as long as you told us in October then I guess we shouldn’t be making a big deal out of this.
Except for one thing …
I checked all of my Flushing Flashes from October. Not once did I see the phrase: “short term liquidity”. I saw three useless updates on the GM searche. I saw an invitation to host my holiday party at Citi Field. I didn’t see anything about a loan. And not that I would expect an e-mail saying that they’re borrowing $25 million for “additional assurance … that they would have the necessary resources to fully compete and win”. And if that phrase sounds familiar, that’s the one they used when they announced their intentions to bring in a sugar daddy to help with cash flow. Seems like that additional assurance was added to the value of absolute zero.
Funny how when the Mets needed additional assurance to win a title other than Jason Bay last season, that never came.
The Flushing Flashes are important here. Because remember when they started ratcheting up those newsletters in an attempt to create a line of communication with the fans after Omar was fired? Well, if there was going to be a line of communication with the fans to tell us stuff we needed to know, then maybe a $25 million loan would have been useful information, no? If they “said it in October” like it was public information, then maybe saying it to us would have helped? Or, pray tell, was the uptick in Flushing Flashes mere “public relations”? Oh, I never would have imagined.
Oh that’s right, it was a “secret loan“. Okay.
I even checked Metsblog, a site that’s a thousand times more reputable than mine. I searched “liquidity”. Was there anything from October? NO! So who exactly did they say this to in October? The trick or treaters? The ones dressed as Irving Picard?
And God help them if we ever find out that this financial assistance to help “sustain the operations of the franchise” went to help pay Bonilla’s contract because he threatened to show the Wilpons the Bronx. Ooooooh boy.
I’m waiting for the next Flushing Flash which will say something like “As many outlets have reported, we had to undertake a loan to sustain operations. This is normal procedure and this will not stop us from signing the likes of D.J. Carrasco in the future.” I’m guessing it should come around noon on Saturday. Yeah yeah yeah. Spare me. And I love how people were commending Jeff Wilpon for appearing during spring training to exude the feeling that everyone is fine. Problem is, we all know it’s not. Friday’s news confirmed that. So that renders anything that the Wilpons have said or will say or write in an e-mail worth nothing. So it would really be best not to bother.
I know everyone’s sick of this by now, and will be more sick of this financial talk by the season’s start. But the enormity of what the Wilpons have pulled off cannot be understated: They took a business, the business of baseball, which operates in the northeast where there is enough demand for baseball to draw more than 7 million fans conservatively per season for 162 dates, and they’ve successfully run it into the ground. A team that once owned this city turned into a team who became an incentive to do business with EZ Pawn. We’re not talking baseball in a city where the demand is only there for winter sports. This is baseball in the northeast. A baseball franchise with a new stadium, and a profitable network.
And they needed a loan to sustain operations. I imagine it would be the equivalent of running an insolvent dairy farm in Wisconsin. Or not being able to distribute beer in Milwaukee. Or running a brothel in Los Angeles and having Charlie Sheen turn you down.
Yup, that’s what the Mets did. They’ve turned Charlie Sheen abstinent.
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