HIS OWN’ MAN

In death, Doubleday remembered for his NYC-approved philo$ophy

THE melancholy reality about the men who own sports franchises, especially in this city, is that they rarely see the day of their greatest, most unanimous glory. That only comes in the moments after they pass from this mortal coil, begin their journey to that Great Owner’s Box in the Sky.

And so it is George Steinbrenner, reviled by his own fans for so much of his tenure as the owner of the Yankees, has enjoyed consensus veneration from those same fans for almost every day since July 13, 2010. So it is that Wellington Mara — who moved the New York Giants to New Jersey, who ran the operation for each of the 17 seasons from 1964 to 1980, when the team failed to make the playoffs — has had those trifling truths all but expunged from his permanent record since Oct. 25, 2005.

James Dolan — engaged in what is destined to be a longterm virtual wrestling match with Jeff Wilpon to determine the most detested owner in New York for now and for the foreseeable future — summed it up perfectly to me in an aside last year, when he sat down for a rare interview.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s look back at which New York sports owner was loved by the fans when they owned the team. Do you know any?”

I mentioned that Steinbrenner’s reputation had enjoyed a posthumous rise. “There you go,” Dolan said, “Maybe they’ll love me when I’m dead.”

So it is natural as we pay tribute to Nelson Doubleday, we employ something of an airbrush to his tenure as the Mets’ principal owner (from 1980 to ’ 86) and their coowner (from ’86 until his acrimonious parting with Fred Wilpon in 2002).

Doubleday, who died Wednesday at 81, was an im perfect owner, as all owners are. He wasn’t always accessible, in part because he could be clumsily loose-tongued. He was a bitter opponent to revenue sharing, which has turned out to be one of the game’s great nourishments. He was at least partially responsible for the franchise’s stillshocking decline from 116win bullies in 1986 to 103loss pariahs a mere seven years later. Fair is fair. But this is also true: The thing the Mets cry out for now, what they’ve cried out for across every day of the 13 years since Wilpon bought Doubleday out, is precisely what Doubleday provided during his stewardship — at the least, an aggressive voice to counter the overwhelming fiscal parsimony exhibited by the Wilpons.

And at best, a willingness to act the part — to revel in the part — of owning a baseball team in the biggest big market in the sporting world. A few days following the Mets signed Mike Piazza to a $91 million deal after the 1998 season — and Piazza was a Met entirely and exclusively because in the final showdown Doubleday ever won with Wilpon, he insisted the Mets trade for him — he said this to me, over the telephone:

“We have a distinct advantage. We play in New York. We’re in a huge market, and that allows us to do certain things. Now, we’re not going to go down into the subway and start throwing dollar bills at the trains, but we are in a position to do things to help our ballclub that maybe other teams can’t do.”

And that has always stood, to me, as what the mantra of the New York owner, any sport, any era, should be: Embrace who you are. Embrace the inherent benefit of operating in earth’s greatest media market. Admit that these provide no certainties — and there is still a need to distribute your bounty wisely.

“There’s an old saying,” he said. “To whom much is given, much should be expected.”

Yes. YES. Always, that is what Mets fans have pleaded the Wilpons to understand, a message that has fallen on deaf corporate ears and silent corporate tongues for most of the past 6 ½ years.

Look, we can go back and study in excruciating detail the many ways Wilpon — who started out with a 5 percent piece of the team in 1980 — outmaneuvered, and ultimately ousted Doubleday — whose original ownership stake was 88.5 percent. Wilpon took advantage of a contract clause to muscle Doubleday into an equal partnership in 1986 — which also happened to be around the time that strength was augmented thanks to a financial adviser named Madoff.

We can question — as Doubleday surely did — if Wilpon and Bud Selig really conspired in 2002 to devalue the Mets specifically to rid Wilpon of an unwanted partner and clear the path for Jeff’s ascent. But really, what good does it do? Business wars are rarely pretty. You play to win. At all costs.

Of course, it would be nice if the Mets’ owners utilized the same credo in their baseball business. When Doubleday still had a say, at least someone with a voice would insist on it. The Mets cry out for such a voice now, one to counteract the discountbin philosophy that’s ruled the organization for too long. Once upon a time, an owner of the Mets understood they work in New York City, not New Effington, S.D.

Once upon a time, an owner of the Mets acted that way, too.