By Mike Steffanos December 22, 2020
Tim Britton had a very good piece in The Athletic yesterday about new Mets owner Steve Cohen. It was rather long, heavily researched and, as is the case with anything written about Cohen, done without any cooperation from the man himself. Despite his willingness since buying the Mets to engage with fans on Twitter and do the long interview with Steve Gelbs for Mets Hot Stove, Cohen notoriously avoids speaking with print reporters. Interestingly enough, although Britton notes that "more than a dozen" people were interviewed for the piece, twice that number of folks declined to give interviews, even anonymously. Hey, if I worked for the guy, I'd probably take a pass, too. Not worth it.
Britton's long piece was subtitled above the byline, "Relentless. Ruthless. Genius. The many sides of Steve Cohen". Although, as I said, I really enjoyed the article, it also brought to mind the limitations of this sort of profile. You're trying to get a read on the person by piecing together some individual points of view on the man, but that always paints a fairly incomplete portrait. I'm certainly not interesting enough for the effort, but if you spent a couple of months interviewing some of the folks who know me, you'd likely wind up with something that just wouldn't represent me that well. With the exception of Lisa, most of the people who know me only know a small facet of who I am. Even I, as I've grown older, a little smarter, a little more self-aware and discerning, have come to see some of the things that I believed about myself years ago weren't completely on the money. Moreover, I've changed enough over the years that folks who knew me pretty well 20 years ago wouldn't have all the great of a handle on who I am today.
My point isn't to pick apart Britton's good work, but to note that you need to take everything in an attempt to shine a light on someone with a grain of salt. It's like watching a movie biography of a famous person. The good ones will try to reveal some truths about the person without pretending to be a definitive portrait. In that same spirit, I enjoyed Britton's piece for the chance to learn a bit more about Steve Cohen.
One thing that the piece brought home to me was just how wild of a ride it's been for the past year or so, when word first came out that the Wilpons were going to sell the team. Honestly, I had pretty much given up on the Mets becoming any sort of first-class baseball operation under Fred and Jeff. I'm sure that many of you felt the same way. It used to really irritate me when some in the media bent over backwards to defend them by pointing out what a great guy Fred is, or blaming all of the team's problems on the Madoff fallout when there was a long track record of failure predating that mess. One of the most bitterly disappointing moments of my Mets fanhood came last winter when the original sale to Steve Cohen fell through due to ridiculous demands that Fred and Jeff keep control for five years.
The knowledge that the Mets were still for sale was somewhat comforting, but I honestly worried about going from the frying pan directly into the fire if a person or group gained control of the club that would prove to be as bad or (perish the thought) even worse than the Wilpons.
Nightmare scenarios included the Dolans getting control of the Mets and running them as poorly as the Knicks and Rangers have been run. Another was the Arte Moreno syndrome — getting a rich guy in the driver's seat with a huge ego and a tendency to micromanage. Still another was getting a real bean counting ownership that would be more interested in keeping the team profitable rather than contending for a title. I wrote a piece back early in my return to blogging having a little fun with what I was looking for in a potential new Mets owner.
I remember when the Alex Rodriguez/Jennifer Lopez group emerged. I thought they had some good ideas, but ultimately I worried about them needing to take on a lot of debt to purchase the team and then struggling along in some Wilponian hell of trying to service that debt, running a large-market payroll and trying to upgrade all of the organizational elements that the Wilpons never seemed to care about. That just didn't seem to be a realistic expectation, so I found myself rooting for the guy with the multi-billion dollar fortune to come out the winner.
I was gratified when Cohen did wind up as the new owner. Honestly, though, in my wildest dreams I didn't foresee the man being accessible to Mets fans on Twitter and greeting season ticket holders in person along with his wife. I'm sure the guy isn't perfect, but I honestly believe the Mets might have went from having arguably the worst ownership in New York sports to quite possibly the best. I hoped for the best when the sale was happening, but I didn't foresee things going quite like this.
But as cool and fun as the Twitter banter and interacting with season ticket holders has been, the real important stuff is the owner's commitment to building a first-class organization. For a team that has only made the playoffs three times this century (remember, 2000 is considered the last year of the twentieth century), what fans want most is to see their team at least reasonably contending for a playoff spot every year.
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