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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.