It’s only fitting Mets’ ownership hunt is parade of liars and cheats

“I’m speechless,” he began. I sense the day is coming when Mr. Met will be pinched at JFK attempting to board a flight to the Cayman Islands. His head will be cut open to reveal purloined cash and stock certificates that he’ll claim he never knew he was carrying — someone must’ve switched heads on …

“I’m speechless,” he began.

I sense the day is coming when Mr. Met will be pinched at JFK attempting to board a flight to the Cayman Islands. His head will be cut open to reveal purloined cash and stock certificates that he’ll claim he never knew he was carrying — someone must’ve switched heads on him.

If dishonest money is naturally attracted to dishonest money, the Mets are a natural. Enter the Wilpon Clan:

Twice knocked on its fanny for an inclination to throw in big with Ponzi schemers, from the Wilpons MLB should have demanded the keys to the Mets’ tarnished and tattered tent for its greedy financial recklessness, especially after the second deal, with Bernie Madoff — the calamity in which investors were not allowed to ask any questions.

Instead, MLB floated the Mets a $25 million loan.

Needing to off-load expenses, the Mets then tuned to hedge fund/hedgehog operator Steve Cohen, whose firm in 2013 paid a record $1.8 billion fine for insider — crooked, dishonest, illegal — trading.

I often wonder how that played out. “Marge, I’ll have the egg salad on whole wheat toast, a side of onion rings and a Diet Coke. Oh, and when you get back, have the hedge fund cut a check to the government for $1.8 billion.”

Or did Cohen’s operation pay the fine out of the petty cash drawer?

But these aren’t merely days of diminished standards but of flipped standards. Who cares who next owns the Mets as long as they’re new guys. And so simplistic fans and media celebrated the anticipated coming of Steve Cohen, the head of a Wall Street firm nailed for insider-trading, as the potential new owner for whom they’d long been dreaming.

But the Cohen deal, as if he were going to play backup to pikers, went kaput, and now the latest to cause media and fans a rush of blood to the head is the entry one of the most notorious cheats and liars — and beneficiary of the two — in sports history, Alex Rodriguez. He’d like to buy at least a chunk of the Mets. Hooray!

Can neither MLB nor the Wilpons find any honest candidates?

Rodriguez was the inexplicable recipient of the fastest no-good-reason turnaround in the history of lying cheats. He wasn’t done with baseball for a minute when first Fox then ESPN came begging for his million-dollar-smile on-camera services. So he signed with both.

And the abdication of integrity and credibility among those who know better hasn’t ceased. Two weeks ago Rodriguez was appointed to the Board of Directors of the prestigious Paley Center for Media — an archive and think-bank for TV and radio history and contributions.

Why did Rodriguez qualify? Who knows? I looked and looked. Just read that he was a star baseball player, nothing more.

And a guy who enriched himself and degraded The Game by cheating and lying not only wants to buy an MLB team, many “fans” are all for it!

Have we gone mad? Does indisputable right no longer supersede indisputable wrong? Soon, we’ll look at the days of badly diminished standards as the Golden Age of Ethics.

Gamblers’ unemployment claims could be fun

Due to the coronavirus, professional gamblers in Nevada likely will be able to file for and receive unemployment benefits. Seriously.

I don’t wish to be insensitive to their plight and peril, but one wonders the forms pro gamblers must fill out in order to qualify for unemployment checks:

Reason For Application: Split 3s against a 6.

Last Position Held: Anchor.

Mailing Address: Don’s Depths of Degradation Bar & Grill, Reno, Nev.

How Do You Normally Travel To And From Work: Boxcars.

Most Immediate Need Of Funds: Baby needs new shoes.

Reason For Immediate Need: Fast women, slow horses.

References: Wayne Newton, the pawnshop owner.

Last Work Aid Purchased: Mike Francesa’s “My Picks Have Value” phone app.

Spiritual Denomination: Seventh-Card Adventist.

Letter of the Week: Reader Joe Magnetico on ESPN’s Chicago Bulls documentary, specifically Game 2 of the 1986 playoffs when Michael Jordan scored 63 in a two-overtime, 135-131 loss to the Celtics. Take it, Joe:

“Maybe ESPN could emphasize to today’s ‘as soon as I get open even a little, I’m launching a 3 no matter the situation’ players that during that magnificent game the teams combined for 11 3-point attempts, making only three for the entire game, including exactly zero attempts by Jordan.

“That’s right, kids, 266 points scored in a game with six Hall of Famers and neither team needed to chuck as many 3s as humanly possible to play a fantastic game. And the teams shot 81 percent from the foul line.

“ ‘You’re lying, Daddy!’

“Sigh, the NBA used to be great.”

Insert Chris Berman ad here

Has ESPN’s Chris Berman ever turned down an endorsement? Now he stars as his tired, clownish self in an ad for some auto windshield replacement operation. He once appeared in TV ads endorsing weight-loss products and fat-filled three-cheese food platters.

While we’re at it, if Cam Newton doesn’t hook up with a team, think of all those Gatorade towels left on the sidelines.

Shucks, the virus deprived us of that part of the season when NBA players tweet how unhappy they are with their current teams.

A recent mention here of transient first baseman Dick Stuart — 1958-66, mostly with the Pirates and Red Sox — brought readers’ tales about the fellow known as “The Man With the Iron Glove” and “Dr. Strangeglove.” The best is when he received a standing O in Fenway for successfully fielding a hot dog wrapper.

Reader Marcus Holland understands Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman’s public anger with NASCAR driver Kyle Larsen for using the N-word. But Holland asks why, if Stroman detests the word, his “walk-up” music has included rappers spewing N-word lyrics every other line? Or is there a good context for using that slur?

Reader Mike Gattis notes that Michael Kevin Kearney is the youngest college graduate on U.S. record, earning a degree from the University of South Alabama at age 10. “He would’ve been 9,” Gattis writes, “but was red-shirted his freshman year.”

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