Some think Fred Wilpon, the beleaguered New York Mets owner who stands in danger of losing part or even most of his ownership thanks to the Bernie Madoff scandal's fallout, may be in need of a character witness or two. If that's the case, Wilpon won't have to search too far.
All he has to do is pick up the phone and call a friend since high school days. Or, better yet, see what happens when that friend pays his annual visit to the Mets' spring training complex, where he dispenses counsel and coaching to any Met pitchers who seek it.
"I hate to see him be beat up this way," Sandy Koufax told reporters at the complex last weekend. "I don't know a kinder, more generous, more compassionate human being than Fred."
When the customarily reticent Koufax speaks, people listen. And this isn't the first time Koufax has singled Wilpon out for high public praise. A few years ago, at a dinner for the Baseball Assistance Team (the organization that arranges financial and other assistance for men who played the game in the reserve clause era), Koufax surprised the gathering by asking for a moment, then taking a microphone and intoning, "I'm not just saying this because he's been my friend for 50 years, but I was wondering why Fred Wilpon is the only owner at this dinner tonight."
Getting a character reference from Sandy Koufax is comparable to getting a rabbinical blessing. And Wilpon just might need that, to defend himself against the Madoff victims' trustee's claim, on the grounds that he had to have known what he claims not to have known, that Madoff was running a grand scam.
If a court believes the trustee, Wilpon could lose part or even all of what he loves most behind family and friends. There's been fortnight-long speculation that Wilpon may sell part or even most of the Mets, speculation Wilpon has rejected so far. That's a far path from the days when Madoff's schemes first unraveled and Wilpon, perhaps trying to save face, insisted his and the Mets' finances weren't as dire as feared in spite of it.
Koufax's defence may be one of the sweetest gifts Wilpon has received in the past fortnight. There may be no man in or around baseball with deeper integrity; no man in or around baseball less capable of being false.
You could have asked Buzzie Bavasi, Koufax's former boss. When Koufax decided it was time at last to announce his retirement, after an arthritic elbow's maintenance to keep pitching became too dangerous to bear any longer, he telephoned Bavasi the night before making the announcement.
Bavasi didn't kid himself. "You've got money in the bank, you're a young man, there's no sense in staying in baseball and jeopardizing your future," he is said to have told his star. All he asked, Bavasi continued, was that Koufax hold off on announcing until owner Walter O'Malley, traveling with the Dodgers on an exhibition tour in Japan, returned for the winter meetings.
Koufax already was doing that kind of favor for a friend. He was actually ready to announce his retirement on the Dodgers' flight back to the West Coast, after the Baltimore Orioles swept them out of the 1966 World Series. San Diego Union sportswriter Phil Collier talked him out of it right then and there: You'll screw up every AM paper in America. There's no hurry. Wait a couple of weeks.
That was as far as Koufax would agree to go. Now, Bavasi was asking him to hold out a little longer. The general manager feared losing trade leverage in any deal for another major league-qualified left-hander, even if only on the roster. ("The Dodgers," Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Bragan would crack come spring training, "start 1967 27 games back.") Koufax feared compromising his integrity.
"I don't think Sandy ever told a lie in his life," Bavasi would remember, about a decade ago, to Koufax's best and most incisive biographer, Jane Leavy.
But Koufax doesn't just stand up for his own integrity, he also stands up for his friends. When Al Campanis bumbled his way out of baseball — in an exhausted state, during an infamous Nightline television interview, he blurted out that blacks lacked "the necessaries" to become baseball executives, when he probably meant to say they lacked "the necessary experience"; it may not have been any the more pleasant to hear, but it was less likely to be taken as a racial epithet — Koufax was one of his defenders.
"Don't let one incident ruin your life," Koufax urged the man who once played on the Montreal Royals with and championed Jackie Robinson, and who discovered Koufax himself as a Brooklyn scout in 1955. "We know how you are. You know how you are."
Wilpon has something of a reputation for having to learn the hard way when his trust is misplaced. He once had to turn over $1.3 million after another business adviser through whom he invested turned out to be a criminal good for 22 years in the calaboose. He's known Madoff for years, invested with Madoff based on that friendship, urged others to consider investing with Madoff on the basis of that trust. No matter the final outcome, whether Wilpon is vindicated or convicted, it's difficult if not impossible to imagine him giving his trust too readily again.
Koufax isn't just offering a hand on a shoulder. He, too, took a financial beating in the Madoff mess. "I was part of that investment," said Koufax, who is not a litigation target in the mess. "And I think if Fred knew it was going to be a bad investment, he never would have told me to put money in it. I don't know who are the victims and who aren't the victims. If I lost any money, I didn't lose it to Madoff, I lost it to the IRS. You pay taxes on money that didn't exist. That's what happened, but I got some of that back."
That may be just enough to provoke the question of how many of Madoff's victims likewise lost how much by way of taxes on imaginary lucre. It may be a question that could help or hurt Wilpon, depending upon the breadth of the answers. "I have no problem with what's going on," Koufax said of efforts to reclaim the billions lost by Madoff's victims, one of whom may well be Wilpon. "I just feel bad for Fred."
Surely, though, Koufax would have much preferred to do what he loves most, pass the pitching art along. ("Mr. Koufax," said a newly minted Met pitcher, Chris Young, "I'm Chris Young and I'm honored to meet you.") But standing by and doing or saying nothing as an old and close friend suffers is, apparently, more intolerable to him than was the pain through which he once stood on a pitcher's mound before throwing those unhittable fastballs, those voluptuous curve balls.
Leave a Comment