Greenwich Roundup: 03/30/08 - "Jeff is the kind of guy that once he wins the World Series, he'll only be happy for a very short time,"

Sunday, March 30, 2008

03/30/08 - "Jeff is the kind of guy that once he wins the World Series, he'll only be happy for a very short time,"

New York Mets pitcher Johan Santana, foreground, is watched by owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, right, during the first full squad workout at baseball spring training in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Jeff Wilpon won't rest until Amazin' mission is complete

Via Recordonline.com - The Times Herald-Record

It's five o'clock in the morning in Greenwich, Conn., the land of high net worth and billion-dollar hedge funds, and inside one of these tony, new-money homes, a creature of habit is already stirring — and beginning to sweat.

Jeff Wilpon, 46, one of the most vilified New York City sports figures in recent years but who has more and more become the face of Mets' ownership, is pedaling furiously on his stationary bike, something he does for an hour every day.

It's said by those who know Wilpon best that from this point on he won't come to anything resembling a complete stop until, incredibly, around 10 at night, moving steadily throughout his day like some Pac-Man gobbling up everything in his path, seemingly checking off one item after the next — in exact order, no less — from a carefully-prepared, if not overly ambitious list ...

...His friends and allies say he's all about the mission of the moment, and it's a good guess that his mission this very moment, whether he admits it publicly or not, is as much about his own vindication as about the Mets winning a world championship, to at last show all those who have flippantly flung insults at him over the years that they're dead wrong about him, that there's far more to Jeff Wilpon than just being the boss' son.

"I'm not in this," he once said without a twitch of doubt, when the world was against him at the beginning, "not to achieve my goal."

Poster boy of nepotism

From the time he entered our consciousness, circa 2001, Jeff Wilpon, who "politely" declined to be interviewed for this story, appeared to us as nothing but a poster boy of nepotism, thrust by his dad into the Mets' organization despite not having on his resume a sliver of hardball management experience. Combine that with his arrival coinciding with the team's sudden descent into oblivion, eventually straight to the bottom of the National League East, and it made for a situation that was no-win from the get-go, where he might as well as had a "Kick Me!" sign taped on his back.

In fact, it took little time for one local columnist to playfully dub him Paris Wilpon, conjuring an unseemly image of a spoiled, empty-headed dolt running around out of control on nothing but unearned money, whose only claim to fame was being an heir to a family fortune.

It didn't help that whatever suspicions people had about Jeff's substance were made that much worse by the fear and loathing of his out-of-the-gate, rough-edged style. To those within the inner sanctum of Metland, he was seen early on, according to sources and published accounts, as something of a pugnacious punk, someone who'd only remove the silver spoon born in his mouth to rap people over the head with it: snooty, abrasive, impatient, short-tempered, unreasonable and a bully over the powerless, who would go so far as to fire an usher for committing the egregious sin of smoking a cigarette on the job.

One revealing story goes back to 2003, Jeff's first full season as COO. The Mets had just finished playing a series against the Expos in Puerto Rico, and they were returning on the team charter. First, however, they needed to go through security on the tarmac, forced to stand on this long, snaking line. It was taking an eternity, too. Jeff, who had stayed behind while his father flew out a day earlier on a private plane, suddenly showed up, taking his place in the back. But after waiting for just a half-minute, he released this snort of an exasperated sigh, lifted up his luggage with a snap, and simply bolted to the front, passing a string of stunned expressions — and forever-altered perceptions.

"It was like, 'I'm more important than everybody else,'" said one eyewitness.

It's these kinds of ugly first impressions that linger to this day, remaining uncomfortably under the surface...

..."I think it was Jeff's lack of experience that made him do some things that rubbed people the wrong way," said one high-level former employee who asked for anonymity. "Overall, I think his intentions were good. He was just trying to get the team going in the right direction. But at times, he didn't come across that way. I think because he's such a highly competitive guy that sometimes it was like he wanted to prove to people that he deserved to be there in that job."

A little Yankee in him

"George Steinbrenner on training wheels," is what the whispers have always said about Jeff, appearing far more like George's boy than Fred's.

"Jeff is regimented, extremely demanding and a perfectionist," Browne said. "He wants to win on the field, he wants to win in business, and he's committed to always being better — that is, at everything, even his golf game. Like last summer, while he was on vacation, he e-mailed me that he hit a 68, which was the first time he had ever broken 70. But what I remember most about that e-mail is that after briefly praising himself for that 68, he wrote — mind you, in the same sentence — about how upset he was for the two shots he blew that would've given him a 66. I mean, he couldn't be happy with himself for more than a split second."....

..."He's changed," Horwitz claimed. "He's mellowed."

"I'll say this," said one employee, "when the Mets were going through their collapse in those last couple of weeks, Jeff not only didn't show any strain but still took the time to come up to me, pat me on the back, tell me I was doing a good job and even asked about my family."

This is not to say, of course, that Jeff Wilpon has magically transformed, but maybe, just maybe, he's evolved a few degrees from those initial Met years, when he was someone so shockingly devoid of social skills that people around him couldn't believe he was related to the regal man who brought him into being.

A distinct difference

When you look at the father and son, you quickly see the striking physical resemblance smack in the middle of their faces: that long, thin, upturned nose. But that's where any kind of similarity seems to begin and end. While Fred's lips curl easily into an engaging smile, Jeff's don't, only occasionally managing something akin to a forced grin. While Fred's eyes twinkle, Jeff's barely blink, looking all business, caught in deep thought while possibly pondering the next thing on his agenda. And while Fred exudes a polished elegance and fatherly warmth, as well as being someone famously judicious with his words, Jeff appears raw, impulsive and a bit on the chilly side.

"Jeff doesn't dwell on the emotions (of the job)," said Howard. Like with e-mails — "He prefers getting shorter ones," he said, "and he doesn't like to get the gratuitous, 'OK, thanks,' type of responses. He prefers just, 'Got it. Done.' And that's the end of the chain."...

...By 10, Jeff was already carrying around homemade business cards identifying himself as Sterling Equities' "Director of Construction." It was around 15 years later, in 1986, that his dad made him the company's executive vice president — but not before Fred made his son pay his dues with another builder and three years after, as a catcher, Jeff had an eye-blink of a fling at professional baseball, drafted by the Expos (which, rumor has it, was done as a favor to Fred) and spending a brief time with Class-A Jamestown of the New York-Penn League (though his name reportedly doesn't appear in the team's statistics for that season).

He's the boss

What Jeff did last September, especially, was nothing like his dad but straight out of the George Steinbrenner playbook.

Not only did he lower the boom at the worst of times — telling SI.com in the midst of his team balancing perilously on the tipping point: "I'm disappointed with the way the team is performing overall, and that's everyone, top to bottom. I'm disappointed in Omar (Minaya, the general manager), Willie (Randolph), the players ... that's everyone. We shouldn't be in this position," — but once the season ended, reminiscent of Steinbrenner's apology to New York City after the Yankees tanked in the 1981 World Series to the Dodgers, Jeff fired off a letter via e-mail to all Mets season-ticket holders, expressing bitter disappointment over what had happened, conceding they, the fans, indeed deserved much better and promising to fix whatever was wrong.

That attempt at a fix came just days before spring training — in the form of, arguably, the best pitcher in the game, Johan Santana — and Jeff did it exactly the way the Boss in his heyday used to: by first trading away a slew of prospects, then closing the deal with a man-to-man chat and flipping open that fat checkbook of his....