Silent Wilpons have earned their place in pantheon of hate
T
THE FIRST time was a Friday night, April 27, 1982. Rain was falling at old Yankee Stadium in the top of the seventh inning, the Angels were beating the Yankees 2-1, and Reggie Jackson, playing his f irst game in New York after George Steinbrenner chose not to re-sign him, stepped to the plate.
Ron Guidry’s f irst pitch was a slider. It wasn’t a good one. Reggie sent that slider up to a place he knew awfully well, the third deck at the old stadium, and he took his sweet time circling the bases. And it was at that moment that a chant arose among the 35, 548 people in the stands, lightly at first, then louder, then enough to rattle the statues and the plaques in Monument Park. “Stein-brenner Sucks! Stein-brenner SUCKS! STEIN-BRENNER SUCKS!!”
“It was hard to believe,” Reggie said afterward. “But the people in New York are very direct. I chuckled inside. Fans sometimes have a way of reading your mind, of being more direct than you can be.”
The second time was a Monday night, July 30, 1990. Roberto Kelly was at the plate for the Yankees, bottom of the third inning, facing Detroit’s Steve Searcy, when suddenly there was a commotion all around the ballpark, an odd buzz; those with transistor radios and Walkman devices began spreading the news: Fay Vincent had just banned George Steinbrenner. For life. And soon, much of the crowd of 24,037 sprang to their feet: “No more George! No more GEORGE! NO MORE GEORGE!!” So let’s get this out of
the way right here: As unpopular as the Wilpon family is right now among Mets fans, as egregious as their s teward s h i p has most ly been since they took full control in August 2002, as much as they have become, by far, the most reviled owners in town … they still haven’t inspired this, in their own park. Yet, anyway. But, make no mistake, they haveve engendered an enormous amountnt of bad will, thanks to many things:gs: their prominent role as both beneficiary and victim of Bernard Madoff ’s Ponzi scheme; as big-market owners who have never fully embraced big-marketet economics in a sport lacking a sal-alary cap; as serial meddlers (espe-ecially Jeff Wilpon); and as chiefef architects of a franchise hurtlingng toward a 1 3th losing season in those 18 years of the Wilpon Era.
That last fact is the most unfor-rgivable one, and it is a burden allall owners carry at one time or anoth-her. Even John Mara, generally seenen as the most competent and thehe sports most benevolent owners, found of all himself New York in r a months-long firestorm when thehe Giants 2017 season went all to hellell (which called to mind the manyny years when his father, Wellington,n, was nearly driven out of town by angry fans in the ’60s and ’70s).
But We l l i n g t o n Ma r a and George Steinbrenner had two valuable things in common: First, their franchise’s fortunes turned later in life, allowing their f inal legacies to be graced by a surplus of good will and championships; second, when they failed, or when one (Steinbrenner) tried to move the team to Jersey and the other actually did, there was no such thing as social media.
It was a lot harder for fans to rent a plane to send their message than it is to fire off furious bursts 140 or 280 characters as a time.
The Wilpons have no such buffer and so theirs is an existence in which their team’s failure, mixed with their own reluctance to ever make t hemselves ava i l a bl e to be interviewed, mixed with the instant gratif ication available to fans on social media makes for an unprecedented, highly combustible cocktail.
In my job, in this space, I’ve filleted Mets ownership for years, often by name, sometimes simply referring to them as “ownership,” or “the top.” But something has evolved, rather quickly, among many of the most ardent fans: They demand name-shaming now. If you don’t write the actual word “Wilpon” when referring to “the men who own the Mets ,” yo u’ ve pulled a punch. You’re in their pockets.
Now, I will fight to the death a fan’s right to rip whomever they please. It is their time, their money, t heir personal investment. You want to blame all of the Knicks’ calamities on James Dolan, I’m there with you. Want to crush the Johnson family for their stewardship of the Jets? Deal me in. And yes: The Wilpons have created this vast credibility gap for the Mets, and they refuse to ever address it, so there is a justice in the fact they must wear it, too. But it does bear repeating: The Wilpons in 2018, are, at best, 60 percent as detested as Steinbrenner was in 1990. They are, at best, maybe 75 percent as loathed as Well Mara was in 1971, when he moved the Giants across the river and his team missed the playoffs for the eighth straight year — with nine more futile years ahead. Things can change. But can perceptions? After all, the Mets have played for a championship more recently than any other team in the market — less than three years ago.
That didn’t buy the Wilpons too many mulligans.