Column: Mets’ ownership a disservice to team’s fans

This idea might sound crazy until you realize how much human suffering the New York Mets management causes the people of the Empire State. The Mets are not just bad; they are tragically bad. Consider the following examples of organizational malfeasance. The Mets will likely vie with the Florida Marlins for third in the National League East this season despite having the fifth-highest payroll in all of baseball.

The trustee of the fund for Bernie Madoff’s victims is suing the securities firm, Sterling Equities, of which Mets owner Fred Wilpon is the chairman, for more than $1 billion. One would imagine a settlement would hurt the Wilpons’ ability to finance the team. Last week, the Mets flat-out released pitcher Oliver Perez two years after signing him to a three-year, $36 million contract. They still owed him $12 million, but decided he was not good enough to make the roster.

Perhaps worst of all, the Mets do not have a pipeline of minor league talent that can save them from their present suffering: According to the organizational ranking website FanGraphs.com, the Mets are tied for the fifth worst “future talent” in the game. (FanGraphs also ranks the organization as a whole as No. 21 in the league.)

The Mets should not be this bad. They have a large and relatively wealthy fan base. The danger of the recent Madoff scandal is that people expect recapitalization from some investors will save the Mets. The lesson of the last decade, however, is not that the Mets need more money — it’s that their management is terrible. Recall that the Mets’ payroll is fifth-highest in the league. Surely, Mets general manager Sandy Alderson is a major improvement over his predecessor Omar Minaya. Still, Wilpon is in charge. If the Mets were a public agency, they would be derided as poorly managed and in need of privatization. The Mets, though privately owned, stand out as one of the mostly poorly managed institutions in America. A takeover is in order.

I would not want the state to manage the team. On the contrary, I think the state should take over the Mets in the interest of the public welfare and then help the team go public.

Imagine how awesome it would be to own shares of your favorite team. Shareholders’ meetings would be raucous affairs held in Citi Field. Votes could be held about whether to fire the manager or the GM. One of the problems with contemporary fandom is that the professional sports team you root for is not actually yours; it belongs to a really wealthy guy or corporation. Even if regular fans could own only small portions of the Mets, fandom would become a lot more interesting.

Of course, this is all probably illegal. And even it was legal, I’m pretty sure taxpayers would end up compensating the Wilpons for their seized property — which would be costly. Still, in a world in which municipalities are frequently robbed by rich owners who demand public subsidies for new stadiums (perhaps the public financing for Yankees Stadium and Citi Field might have been better spent on crime policy, anti-terrorism or education?), would it not be awesome if the public actually got a stake in the team or profited from the team’s sale?

In a year in which Mets fans have no hope of actually winning the division, they should root for the impossible — or at least dream to distract from the mind-numbing mediocrity.