Mets Battle Madoff Ghost

Meet the Mets and their ghostly Uncle Bernie, whose specter continues to haunt the team's front office although his corporeal form is encased somewhere in a North Carolina federal pen. The World Series starts tonight in Kansas City. Here's my curtain-raiser, complete with old-man-lifting-heavy-trophy sound effects:

As the young superstars of the New York Mets soaked each other with Taittinger Champagne and Budweiser in the moments after seizing the National League pennant on October 21, the ghost of the Madoff Affair was writhing in a Proton Stream somewhere in corporate offices at CitiField.

Or that’s how it felt when the television broadcast cut away from the Champagne bath to what looked like a hospital hallway, where Mets kingpins Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz — who four years ago faced a billion-dollar lawsuit and near-certain financial ruin in the aftermath of the Madoff fraud — were handed the National League’s championship trophy.

“Aghh,” said Bill Giles, 81, honorary president of the National League, as he lifted the mahogany block and handed it to Wilpon, 78, the Mets’ majority owner. “It’s heavy.”

“Thank you very much — ooh!” said Wilpon, taking the trophy and hoisting it up and down before passing it to Katz, 75, the club’s president.

Read the rest here.

Let's Go Mets, etc., etc., et al.

Josh