What Else Can Happen?

I kept saying, “Well, what else can happen?”

So I found out. The Giants would miss the playoffs entirely. The Jets would lose the AFC Championship and look a little stupid in doing so. The Knicks would hit a losing streak. And the Mets, prized Mets possessions of the Wilpons lo these many years, could be sold, even if just partially.

If I understand this correctly, the Wilpons invested around 520 mill, got back about 570 mill, and somehow, almost magically so, found themselves liable for a billion dollars. Only in America. Only to Mets Fans.

You didn’t see the Steinbrenners making friends with crooks. (I find myself wondering what Billy Martin would have said to that). Sure, the Yanks have their own problems, like a GM starting to feel his oats in the last year of his contract, a new relief pitcher only the GM didn’t want, and an old shortstop that only the GM wants to make even older.

But only Mets fans could find themselves in this kind of situation. The injuries weren’t enough. The bad luck wasn’t enough. The ticket prices weren’t enough. CitiField couldn’t play longer, Ollie couldn’t be sent down, Beltran couldn’t be more pissed off.

So, just when the Wilpons seemed to be getting their affairs together, for example, hiring a GM who wasn’t an idiot and a manager with some good experience, they find themselves looking disaster straight in the eyeballs.

Just when they started to fill out their starting pitching with smart savvy guys like Chris Young and Capuano, just when they re-signed Pelfrey and Dickey, and just when it looked as they had decided to keep guys like Beltran and Bay (rather than sell them now at a sure loss), we have to find out about the vagaries of the legal system….the hard way.

Not that I mind a little ownership sharing, but can the Wilpons really be the shills in this Ponzi scheme? Can you just see Jeff Wilpon rubbing his hands together, sneering “HaHaHaHa” in a smoke-filled room, and happily encouraging all their friends to give all their hard-won assets to Madoff?

I mean, maybe they did encourage people unknowingly, but that’s not what the lawyers for the prosecution are saying. They seem to think an organization with that much money has to have enough intelligence and financial savvy to know when they’re involved in something a little fishy.

Come on, guys, these are the friggin’ Mets! It was easy. This could only happen to them.

I believe the Wilpons. Sure, they’re not the brightest lights in the sky but they’ve never shown any signs of being evil. I think they invested a lot of their money with a trusted friend, somebody who’d always been reliable. I think they saw financial statements and prospectuses and spreadsheets and graphs showing everything going up, and not even dramatically up. How many of us would think there was something wrong?

I guess it’s inevitable that they’ll wind up losing a lot of their original 520 million. That would only be fair, to distribute the total losses among all the clientele more evenly, and I’m thinking all the lawyers will even agree on some huge amount, like maybe half to ¾ of the original investment. But that will be all.

I think we’ve already seen the effects on the team’s acquisitional policy, which is to say, they’re not spending a lot of money. And I have no problem with that. If they had spent big bucks on another Ollie or picked up Carl Pavano, for example, that would have gotten me upset.

But the whole thing, this whole sick Madoff-Wilpon thing, is really kind of unsettling. It brings the real world too close to my psyche. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be a fan at all. I’d spend a lot of time reading about Egypt, and Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’d be fretting about reducing corporate taxes and making bad electric cars. I’d be ecstatic about firing the whole damned Passaic Valley Sewer Authority.

I can’t control those things. I can only vote. And look what that’s got me.

We can’t control ownership issues either. We can just hope for the best. All the question marks of last year have to resolve in our favor. Jason Bay has to hit, Carlos Beltran has to excel, Angel Pagan has to keep it going, and Reyes has to have a nice year. Ike Davis and Josh Thole have to keep developing. Pelfrey and Niese and Dickey have to keep on truckin’.

It’s maybe a blessing in disguise that this non-acquisitional period just happens to coincide with the ascension of the Phillies and the Braves. Let’s watch their expensive pitching blow up. Let’s see what bad luck they can have with expensive arms.

And yeah, we’ll concede the pennant this year, and maybe even the year after that, but that second year could yield a wildcard. And this year this team could be a real pain in the butt to just about anybody.

I mean, think about it. Reyes, Pagan, Beltran, Wright, Bay, Davis and Thole. That’s 7 of 8 spots that can hit. We can deal with a bad bat at second base, not that Luis Castillo will be a bum or that rookie won’t possibly improve a lot. There’s a lot of speed and power in that lineup. And, with even just middling luck, that lineup should produce a lot of runs.

As for pitching, forget Santana for now. And Pelfrey’s not really an ace. Who needs an ace anyway? They only really make a difference in the playoffs, an atmosphere that always seems to bring the worst out of even better than average arms. If you can boast of length in a pitching staff, that’s something in and of itself. The Mets will be in every game.

So I think we’ve already borne the brunt of the Madoff-Wilpon saga. “What else can happen” may wind up being a lot of good things.

It's All Good - Then There's the NBA

This’ll be one of those rambling, all-over-the-place pieces about nothing, a real George Costanza-type nothing piece, if not for content, then for structure, as I really have a lot of impressions, mostly good ones, of baseball and the Mets, and Joba’s fine effort, and in pro basketball, that crazy last-second shot by the Big Baby. Even local pro football seems to be looking good, what with Hakeem Nicks and Mark Sanchez and the proverbial host of others.

Of course, that’s usually when everything starts going to hell, just when you think thing’s are looking good, the classical overemphasis on recent form rather than the hard facts of the overall past record. And the things I’m happy about now could turn in a day. In fact they probably will.

So let’s examine that thought for a moment. The Mets have won seven in a row, mostly with good starting pitching, something everybody in Mets-land was really worried about just two short weeks ago. So, the question then becomes “will the starters continue to perform well?”

Johan Santana, that ace of aces, might be the least likely to continue his incredibly good string this year. He’s given up 6 runs in 39 2/3 innings. The most runs he’s surrendered in one single game is 2. He lost that one and struck out 13. Otherwise, he’s been lights-out all the time and he’s just 4-1 overall with a 0.91 ERA.

But it’s just the law of averages that rears its ugly head. Santana did win 7 in a row last year, though, even with all those saves lost by the relief corps. So who knows? His current performance isn’t really that removed from what he’s done his entire career.

John Maine started this whole thing on May 4th against the Braves at Atlanta, giving up 3 runs in 6 innings. Then he pitched an even better one vs. Pittsburgh on May 9th, allowing just 1 run. Maine has won 3 starts in a row but he’s not averse to winning streaks, having won 4 in a row early last year and an amazing 7 in a row to open up 2007. So Mr. Maine could conceivably just keep going strong.

The other starter to win two during the streak is good ol’ Livan Hernandez. He beat Atlanta on the 5th of May and Pittsburgh yesterday, surrendering 3 totals runs in 12 1/3 innings overall. The other starters, Pelfrey and Niese, won just one during the streak but Pelfrey did impressively win against the World Champion Phillies while Niese’s win came against the lowly Pirates. (Sorry, Pittsburgh fans).

Nay-sayers will point to the quality of the opposition and the fact that the relief hasn’t really been that good over the same period. My quick analysis shows they gave up 8 runs in 18 2/3 innings. That’s not terrible, I guess, but it’s not that good either.

In another sense though, it’s great, as the victims of the scoring have been the more experienced pitchers, Putz and K-Rod, Feliciano and Green. The rookie Parnell gave us 4 scoreless innings while the very old rookie, Takahashi, gave us 3 scoreless.

Once again, nay-sayers will point to the fact that the above stats mean the “ace” relievers gave up the 8 runs in about 12 innings, an ERA of about 6. But I’m not into nay-saying today, and none of them lost the game, which is what this is all about after all.

The schedule is interesting as our heroes have to face the Braves again for three so soon after having had success against them in Atlanta. So the Braves will be looking for payback. Then it’s off to San Francisco for four and Los Angeles for 3, a key road trip against two teams with really good pitching and one that has batters to match.

And, if the Mets batters haven’t been discouraged after that trip, they then continue on to Boston for three. As it would be futile to determine the Boston starters that far in advance, let’s just say that the Red Sox have the best pitching in both leagues.

So it’s imperative that the Mets beat the teams they’re supposed to beat, the Braves and the Giants, so they can be as upbeat as possible against the cream, the Dodgers and the Red Sox. Of course, that’s why they play the games and it should be a lot of good baseball.

Joba’s given up 7 runs in the first innings of his last two games and Yankee fans will have to hope it’s an aberration. Time will tell but I think it’s the latter, his record doesn’t really indicate any big troubles in his first inning of work.

Obviously, if he could come in as a reliever and blow everybody away, every relief appearance basically a first inning stint, he’s quite capable of pitching well in the first inning of a start. He just needs to make himself feel the heat. A good pitching coach might point out the significance of getting off to a good start.

In other baseball news, Evan Longoria has 44 rbi’s already, an insane number in 32 games, basically a fifth of a season, and that projects out to five times 44 or 220 ribbies for the season. As the Scooter would’ve commented, “Holy Cow.”

Pro basketball continues to leave me cold. Despite the wondrous Bulls-Celtics series and the Celts’ continuing intrigue against a very tough Orlando, I find the games impossible to watch. The commercials kill the game, no continuity whatsoever is allowed for the game itself. It’s just a platform for commercials.

It would help if I thought the games were on the level. But I’m just convinced these playoffs are just foreplay for the big Lebron-Kobe matchup. Fouls continue to be called totally arbitrarily, and in at least one instance, the absence of an obvious call cost the Mavericks what could have been a big, big game.

The NBA admitted the error. Thanks, really!