Mets owner Fred Wilpon said Wednesday that he “screwed up” the firing of former Mets manager Willie Randolph.
“I know I screwed up,” Wilpon told reporters at the SNY studio in Manhattan, according to Newsday.com. “I should have said, ‘wait a second.”
Wilpon said general manager Omar Minaya should have waited until the morning after the Mets beat the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim, Calif., on June 16 to dismiss Randolph instead of sending a press release at 3:18 a.m. Eastern time.
Wilpon also told reporters that no one in his immediate family would sell the Mets.
“Right now, everybody in my family, everybody that is involved in my immediate family…everybody is on board as to what we’re doing,” Wilpon said. “They know how passionate I am about this. They could sell SNY possibly, they could sell any of the buildings we have, I could tell you right now.”
Still, Wilpon said “it was hard to mandate” such a condition in his will.
“That’s unfair to them if, in fact, for some reason they needed to (sell),” said Wilpon, who became a part-owner of the team in 1980 and bought the remaining 50 percent from Nelson Doubleday Jr. in 2002.
Wilpon also commented on the new $800 million Citi Field being built for the Mets in 2009.
“Down below, people are going to pay significant prices,” he said of ticket prices. “But we’re going to have $19 seats and $29 seats and $12 seats and whatever. One of the reasons that I wanted this intimate small stadium that was like Ebbets Field is so you can go to the last seat in the upper deck and you will not feel like you’re out of the (world). And that was the goal.”
