“This guy is living my dream,” my father said when I told him the news of Steve Cohen’s negotiations with Sterling Equities about taking over as majority owner of the New York Mets.
There are a lot of Mets fans who are probably thinking that, too.
Just hours after losing Zack Wheeler to the division-rival Phillies — creating another grim outlook for an offseason where the Mets will likely budget rather than piece together a winner — Sterling Equities and the Wilpon family released a statement that their stranglehold on the Amazin’s is coming to an end.
How soon?
We’re not really sure, yet.
The release suggested that Fred and Jeff Wilpon will see the door in five years as a part of a wind-down period. But according to the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, his “financial influence [will] be felt immediately.”
Cohen will become the richest owner in baseball as he’s valued at approximately $13.6 billion, per Forbes.
That report is something to be taken with a grain of salt, though, as I discussed with the New York Daily News’ Katie Feldman.
“That notion is because a ‘friend of Cohen’ who is definitely not Cohen himself called the Post and said he was going to spend,” Feldman wrote. “That’s what you do. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Regardless of the immediacy of Cohen’s presence, there is at least a light at the end of the tunnel for a long-suffering Mets fan base. The problem is that the five-year wait could be an excruciating one if the Wilpons continue to run the team as they have the past 17 years.
Granted, there is no guarantee that they will. Their lingering presence, as Feldman noted, is concerning.
The Wilpons are responsible for keeping the Mets as a second-division team for a majority of the millennia. Despite playing in the largest sports market in the country and being valued as the sixth-most expensive franchise by Forbes, the Wilpons’ refusal to spend money on the best possible players and personnel have kept the Mets in the Yankees’ shadow in New York.
Based on Cohen’s backstory alone, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case once he takes over.
The 63-year-old grew idolizing the Mets on Long Island and remains “a passionate fan,” a source told Sherman.
No passionate Mets fan wants to play the “little brother” role in their city any longer.
And if you don’t think he will spend once he takes over, Tim Britton of The Athletic referred to the “Pointing Man” — a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti that — that Cohen spent $141.3 million to buy.
The Mets have never spent that kind of money on a player.
If Cohen drops that kind of cash on a sculpture, just think of what he’s willing to put into his childhood baseball team.
Mets fans have waited this long. What are a few more years, at worst?
