Jonathan Nossiter: Metsutopia

There you are, Madoff…the people, try and lick that!

The flood of pre-season obituaries (and the patronizing dismissals of their surprising start) makes it seem that the only question about this year’s Mets is how humiliating their last place finish will be. But I think the pundits are dead wrong. And it’s shocking to me that a different narrative hasn’t yet emerged: that this is the most engaging Mets team of the last 25 years.

...Now the only wrinkle in this Capresque fantasy of a true hometown squad is itself an element from the films of Frank Capra: the greedy crybaby millionaire owners and their sordid ponzi scheme-smoking (but not inhaling) ways. Because the great irony of this fantasy team is that they’re not the product of some quixotic corporate gesture (an oxymoron) but the entirely unwanted consequence of incompetent ownership tottering near bankruptcy.

So I have a solution in keeping with the times (if more fitting for Preston Sturges): Occupy Mets!

Let 10 million fans (are there even a million of us left?) contribute 100 dollars each and let’s buy the team. We’ll make it the first of what will come to be known as the Great Sports Fans’ Revolt. We’ll buy the team as a class action 99 percent-er protest. We’ll let Sandy Alderson (a Hawksian hero) stay for four years as a kind of caretaker government (a classic in any transition from dictatorship to democracy). Then we’ll hold elections every four years for a new president to govern Metsland. Let the players get a handsome share of the gate, TV and promotional revenues (they’re entertainers at the highest level after all) and we, the 10 million, will split the rest. Hey, if my daughter Capitu is right, baby faced Miguel Tejada dolls will sell like hotcakes among the Barbie set. And they’ll never have to give them up. Metstopia!