The Mets suck. Blame the owner, not the players.

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You have to imagine Sisyphus happy, wrote Albert Camus, even if he had lived to see the New York Mets, he might have reconsidered. This year has been a particularly put-it: after spending most of the season in first place, they collapsed in August, losing nineteen of twenty-five games while dropping to third place, the playoffs are now at best long-term. For most teams, a disappointment of this magnitude would be the title. Not the Mets.

After a rare win on Sunday against Washington, second baseman Javy Bez was asked about him and a few other Mets who congratulated each other after successful moments during games. It hurts when I knock and get booed, he said, it doesn’t really hit me, but I wanna leave [the fans] knowing that when they were successful, they were going to do the same, to let them know how they felt.

At first glance, it’s hard to say what makes less sense: Bez claiming that the boos don’t get to him until he admits to taking steps to get revenge on fans who he said didn’t bother him, or to admit such a thing knowing that his words would be treated as blasphemy. They were: On the same day, team president Sandy Alderson issued a statement calling for a thumbs-down and Bezs admission unacceptable and assuring the public that it would not be tolerated.

A deeper dive suggests that Bez’s role in this story may be purely noble. He didn’t join the Mets until July 31 after being traded to New York City by the Chicago Cubs. There’s a video of him a week later showing his teammates the thumbs down after hitting a single, on the road in Philadelphia. At that time, he had only played two games in New York; on his home debut, he hit a home run that sparked a comeback victory. Fans chanted Ja-vy! Ja-vy! tonight. So why did he participate in the approval days later, in front of fans of another team?

The simplest answer is that Bez is very close to shortstop Francisco Lindor, for whom the Mets traded before the season and signed the biggest contract in franchise history in ten years, $ 341 million. and Lindors’ struggles led to frequent boos. More important than analyzing the gossip of player-versus-fan dynamics, this whole story highlights a knee-jerk reaction in sport and society that is best observed and avoided: leaving the real bad guys behind. escape justice as their victims turn on each other. Alderson was right when he wrote about Fans Deserving Better. He was wrong to point it at the players and not at team owner Steve Cohen.

People buy sports teams for many reasons. One they all have in common: They believe that owning a team will end up making them even more absurdly wealthy. Cohen, who bought the Mets a year ago, is the richest owner in baseball, with an estimated net worth of $ 13 billion. He came to power as a hero, succeeding the wildly unpopular Wilpon family and promising to overthrow one of the industry’s most dysfunctional cultures. As Cohens’ hedge fund Point72 Asset Management settled out of court an employee who sued for unfair pay and a sexist work environment, while another company he owns, SAC Capital Advisors, paid a record fine of $ 1.8 billion for insider trading, the promise may have exaggerated things a bit. Maybe more than a little.

Cohens was first hired as general manager Jared Porter was fired a month later and is banned by Major League Baseball until at least 2023 after sending more than sixty unsolicited text messages and images sexually explicit to a journalist. Carrier replacement Zack Scott was arrested Tuesday and charged with impaired driving after he was found asleep while driving his car at four a.m. Considering the behavior at the top of the organization, how pissed off should fans really be? If fans really want to be appreciated, they should realize that the Bezs and Lindors of the world aren’t holding them back. The Cohens are.

For all the talk to fans, especially with the COVID economy reminding sports leagues that the live experience is an important part of what millions of viewers watch to see, the truth is they are the only one. part of the owner / player / fan troika who never reap tangible benefits from the growth they help create. In 2002, the Mets’ former owners, the Wilpons, went from a 50% stake to full control after paying $ 135 million. Last year, they sold the team to Cohen for $ 2.4 billion. He gave Lindor a deal worth more than a third of a billion dollars. When Wilpon took over, the team’s biggest contract was $ 91 million. Players and owners have seen incredible money explosions over the past twenty years. What are the fans getting? Higher ticket prices. Higher cable prices. They are nothing but exploited and they are expected to be thankful. What if the fans got organized?

Sport blurs the traditional dividing lines between groups of people. It is an entry point to practice the kind of unifications needed to educate and mobilize groups of people with common interests in justice and the agency. Imagine fans demanding a share of the profits they help create. Parking fees, ticket prices, merchandise costs, neighborhood improvements and what if everything was subsidized once teams hit a certain profit threshold? In most US sports leagues, teams limit player earnings with a salary cap that artificially caps earnings, supposedly for the benefit of both parties. Is a profit cap really unreasonable?

A player who shows solidarity with a friend and a colleague enduring public boos is not blasphemy. The people who deserve a finger pointed in their direction are the owners and managers that fans too often eager to ignore.

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