Just another bizarre Mets update from the New York Times:
MLB Loaned Cash-Strapped Mets $25 Million Last November
Major League Baseball provided $25 million to the owners of the Mets as they struggled to deal with a cash shortfall last fall and a looming lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for victims of Bernard L. Madoff's vast Ponzi scheme, according to two people briefed on the arrangement.
Just once, I would like to be briefed on something. It doesn’t even have to be something important, like one of the biggest franchises in American professional sports needing a bailout in the midst of a financial scandal involving the franchise’s owners.
Still, considering the Mets and their TV network must be worth something like a billion dollars, $25 million seems more like a rounding error than anything else. Or maybe that’s just me ...
Mr. Selig’s decision to give what amounts to extraordinary assistance to one of the sport’s most highly valued teams - one owned by Mr. Wilpon, a man Mr. Selig has long regarded as a close personal friend - could anger other team owners, who might wonder why their money is being used to rescue a team with a $140 million payroll.
Well, I think the other owners might figure it’s just a loan, and that the Wilpons or whoever next owns the Mets will pay that $25 million back.
This piece does raise (but doesn’t answer) another interesting issue. Supposedly the Mets’ owners “have more than $400 million in debt on the team.”
Well, okay. Five or 10 years from now that probably won't seem real important. But some years ago, Commissioner Selig began trumpeting the "60/40 rule," stipulating that every $40 (or $400 million) in debt must be matched by $60 (or in this case, $600 million) in equity. But a rule that's not enforced is ultimately unenforceable. Selig seems to have essentially waived the 60/40 rule to allow Frank McCourt to buy the Dodgers, he might well have waived for the Mets, and for who knows how many other franchises in between.
Maybe it’s just a stupid rule and shouldn’t be enforced. I probably should let these things bother me. They certainly don’t bother the Commissioner.
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