December 2019 was great. You didn’t need a mask to leave your home. In fact, you were actually allowed to leave your home and go wherever you wanted. Better yet, the Wilpons sold an 80% stake in the Mets to Steve Cohen for $2.1 billion ($2.6 billion valuation).

It was a sweetheart deal for the Wilpons, and the Wilpons blew up that deal like the financial masterminds they are.

Going back to the deal, there was going to be a five year transition period where majority ownership would shift incrementally to Cohen. The Wilpons would keep an ownership share, and they would be on the payroll for those five years. More importantly, the Wilpons would get to keep SNY.

From there, a he-said, he-said broke out. As it turns out, the Wilpons really wanted to keep control of the team over those five years. That meant not only running the team with Cohen’s money, but also being the delegated and appointed decision makers for MLB purposes.

Between that and the Wilpons pushing for lucrative salaries, Cohen backed out of the deal. Like every Mets fan for the past decade plus, he had enough of the Wilpons.

That left the owners who actually needed to sell due to their continual financial malfeasance looking for another deal. Of course, there’s no better deal out there. COVID19 or not, there was never going to be a better offer.

According to reports, so far, the first round of bidding has not yielded a $2 billion offer. That’s even with bidders attempting to incorporate SNY into the purchase. It is expected the Wilpons will reject those offers as they will not sell the team for less than $2 billion.

In essence, the Wilpons are going to have to include SNY in a deal to get LESS in return than what Cohen originally agreed to pay them in December. Seeing all this transpire, you become less and less surprised this was a group of people who nearly lost everything in a Ponzi Scheme.

If the Wilpons really wanted $2 billion, they should’ve done everything they could’ve done to ensure the deal with Cohen was finalized. Instead, they wanted control of the team, and likely, one real shot at a World Series title to show us all what they could do if they could spend money. Of course, they could’ve had they not lost all that money in a Ponzi Scheme.

In the end, the Wilpons will get their $2 billion because someone will pay it. When they get it, they’ll have to realize their own hubris cost them SNY and any chance they could’ve gone out winners. The only people who are surprised by that development are the Wilpons.

So, congratulations to the Wilpons for the eventual $2 billion. While you didn’t earn it, you’ve certainly earned the ridicule which will come when everyone laughs at the Wilpons final act as owners being losing money in a botched financial decision by the team.

The jokes will be hilarious, and the future of the team will be even better than that.