Mets fans have been following the teams financial issues with a large degree of confusion and misinformation for the past few years. Often times it has been to a lack of information, piecemeal reporting or by design of the the team itself issuing confusing or false information. Howard Megdal's new e-book "Wilpons Folly: The story of a man his fortune and the New York Mets" does a great job of telling the story in full and painting the clearest picture of the situation I have yet seen.
Megdal take us through the court documents, transcripts and background information ranging from the uncovering of the Madoff scandal in 2008, the failed Einhorn purchase to the present day dealings with Irving Picard. For fans like me who have been following this story for years it provides not only a useful refresher on the issues but fills in numerous gaps and brings to light portions of the story that were never totally clear. When the book came out last month it was disregarded by the Mets organization, which is not surprising considering the book portrays the Mets ownership as negligent, lacking foresight and common sense and worst of all- men whose hubris routinely lead them away from the right choices and solutions at each turn of the scandal.
In the end Mr. Megdal offers a solution, which I found downright brilliant. He proposes the ownership turn the team over the Madoff victims trustee as an investment vehicle to pay back the fictitious profits made by the Wilpons and stolen from the victims. It is a brilliant idea that manages to give everybody involved what they want and make Mets baseball exciting and viable again. After reading a book about a financial scandal it would seem impossible the author could make you feel good but the proposed solution is so exciting I felt hopeful that, if ever adopted, the team I love so much might finally be on the right path.
Wilpons Folly is Howard Megdal's second book about the Mets. His first was "Taking the Field" about his grassroots campaign to be named Mets GM. While it is often a humorous book it shares something with Wilpons Folly, Megdal routinely proposes common sense, intelligent solutions to the Mets problems. After reading both books, I found myself wishing that the Mets would take note and implement some of these ideas.
The book is available as an e-book from the amazon kindle store and for
apple users like me can be read on the iPhone/Pad using the free kindle
app
Keep in mind Megdal is promoting his own take on the information that he wrote about. There could be more information he chose to omit knowing it would clash with his point.
ReplyDeleteJarod-
ReplyDeleteAlways something I keep in mind with any piece of journalism, I am sure their are many facts he could have included that were contradictory. That being said, Megdal's book is consistent with all the other reporting I have read and well researched and cited, so I trust it's veracity.