I May Be Wrong, But… The Quickest Road to Fiscal Responsibility – Part 2 – The Vig’s Not Enough

In business, there are only two sides of the paper. One side shows the revenue that comes in. The other shows what goes out. We call this income and expenses. You da man if you have more coming in that going out. If not, you need an ‘influx of cash’.

‘Howie’ at Cherry’s Disco pulled a gun on me once at my own party. I called my father-in-law and he told me he’d check it out to see if I had any problem. Dad called back, said not to worry, and that Howie would buy me a drink the next time he sees me. I asked my father-in-law if there was some favor I had to do in return someday. He paused and barked in the phone “you’re watching too many fucking movies.”

There are certain things you grow up knowing in a city of New York, like, always let ‘those guys’ put a cigarette machine inside your business. Another was, if you lived in the neighborhood that Pedro Beato lived until around an hour ago, ‘don’t ask what’s inside the boxes, just unload the trucks’. One more was, ‘you never try to build nuthin’ in New York unless The Teamsters were involved.

Wikipedia defines The Teamsters as:

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors. The union had approximately 1.4 million members in 2008.[1] Formerly known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, the IBT is a member of the Change to Win Federation and Canadian Labour Congress[i]

Me? Well, I always defined it as some of their members… Johnny Dio, Dave Beck, Frank Fitzsimmmons, Frank Pentangeli… oops, got that one mixed up… and, of course, Jimmy Hoffa.

The way things work in the real world is you take bids on things like baseball stadiums. You put a deadline as to when all the bids need to come in by and then you check out the, err, bids. The plan is to pick the lowest bid without sacrificing safety, but, again, in the real world, other factors do, and have, come into play.

Sometimes there are ‘incentives’ to agree to a specific bid. They’re usually not a latke dinner.

I’m not implying that the Wilpon family took bribes from the Teamsters to create a situation in which their bid would be chosen to build Citi Field.

What I am reminding everyone that it is, in my opinion, that the monies owed to the Teamsters remain at least partially unpaid, primarily due to the fact that the Bernie Manoff mess cleans the Mets bucks out of Wilpons’ bank accounts.

And, by copying this to the Commissioner’s office, I ask that the origin and identity of these monies owed be determined so the sport is represented properly while certain people root for an under-developed team and others wait for the check to arrive in the mail.

To the best of my limited knowledge, baseball is a clean sport. There are a number of issues The Commissioner needs to address here. How much money is owed to who? Is all the money that is owed ‘on the books’? Is the operation of a major league team, in a large market, being depressed due to the financial problems of one family? How much money is being lost to baseball because of this ‘John’s Bargain Store’ (remember them?) approach to operating?

I want a full accountability as to exactly who is owed what, not like anyone is going to tell me. That would be like opening the boxes that we unloaded from the trucks on ‘Jerome Avenue’.

Fans, you’re not going to be rooting for a team that plays on all pistons until these dudes are removed from baseball, and it seems to me that the only way that can happen is to not attend the games, don’t buy the t-shirts, and write The Commissioner’s office and demand him to step in here.

His address is:

                                                The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball

                                                       Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner

245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor

New York, State: NY Zip Code: 10167

Phone: 212-931-7800

Fax: 212-949-5654

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamsters