Famous people are lining up to not own the Mets

I guess it’s because it’s New York and everyone is bored, but there have been a plethora of reports — and calling them “reports” is actually an insult to the act of reporting — linking famous rich people and the Mets in the wake Wilpon’s announcement that he’s looking for minority owners.  There was the MLK III report. The de riguer Mark Cuban chatter. In recent days we’ve had people asking Mayor Bloomberg and Jerry Seinfeld to state their intentions.

Fun stuff, but we’re not likely to find the next Mets’ minority owner — or maybe majority owner — on the gossip pages.  The people with the kind of money to buy anything other than vanity stakes in major sports franchises are all beyond mere celebrity wealthy, and they’re not the type of people like Mayor Bloomberg — who is legitimately loaded — who live their lives publicly like this.  I mean, look around at baseball’s ownership ranks: most of these guys are people you never heard of before they became baseball owners.

I have some friends who work in finance and big business and they all have tales of big time movers with outrageous amounts of capital at their disposal, either personally or by virtue of being able to wrangle investors.  You haven’t heard of any of them.   Living out loud like big celebrities is anathema to the type of person who is able to conquer the business world. Or inherit their father’s conquests.  These types of people are only remarkable when they prove to be exceptions to this rule, such as the case of Mark Cuban.

The next owner of the Mets is gonna be someone familiar only to those who read every article in the Wall Street Journal.  That’s how big money — truly big money — operates.