FLUSHING, NY – If you’ve never watched the old Twilight Zone episodes, you should do so. Your time will be worth it for no other reason than to see a young William Shatner chewing up the furniture, scenery and any potential job offers as an actor – or so one would think. Anyway, the show’s host, Rod Serling, always started with a line like: “Imagine, if you will...” And that’s just what Fred Wilpon and his President son Jeff Wilpon, are asking Mets fans, gamblers and Ponzi victims alike to do in reference to the proposed casino in Flushing. Under the guise of paying back Bernie Madoff’s massive debt, are the Wilpons gambling on gambling to cure the Mets?
See, Fred & Jeff agreed to pay $162 million to settle charges they ignored signs indicating Madoff was a shyster. Irving Picard, the guy chasing down dollars for the poor slobs that lost it, is just about halfway to the total of $20,000,000,000 (that’s the right amount of zeroes)… But half of 20 billion is 10 billion, so this is a significant amount of cash.
But a gambling casino could change all of that – say Fred & Jeff – and for those of us that root for the resident team out there, we want to use our very vivid imaginations and agree. We want that frogging casino to pay back the Ponzi victims, buy a Guilt-Free Card for the Wilponzis and have them rolling in enough dough to buy Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw and Buster Posey – which sounds a lot like Ponzi.
So, Imagine if you will, a 1,000,000 square foot entertainment and housing development with a swanky, Vegas-like hotel with gaming tables – which are now illegal – in Willet’s Point. Right next to CitiField. Right there. Bingo. Check that, it would be bingo on HGH. It would be Barry Bonds Bingo.
And therein lies the rub.
The money would be somewhat dirty. The Mets, in turn, would be dirty – certainly dirtier than they are now. In fact, they’d be Howie Spira/Yankee dirty. After all, the folks that lost money were gambling to begin with, were they not? They were investing money. They gambled, threw caution to the wind and… lost. For Pete [Rose’s] sake, why the frog are we going to pay back gamblers that lost with money from other gamblers that will lose? Does anyone pay any of us back when we lose our shirts, shorts and sandals on the stock market? No. It’s the same frogging thing.
So here’s the $10,000,000,000 question: Do we turn our eyes away and allow the despicable to be more despicable so that some poor slobs that lost in a game called “Capitalism” can get their money back and we get a decent team to root for?
Sure.
But if the casino gets Governor Cuomo’s blessing (one his daddy would never give), then Pete Rose has to be the manager… Then we could gamble on him gambling.
Cheesy Bruin, tomorrow… And for the love of Pete [Rose], follow us on Twitter. @MeetTheMatts.
