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Well, good morning to you, Mets fans.

Also, Happy Hanukkah. And Merry Christmas. And happy birthday for the next, oh, five or six birthdays.

Some mornings you wake up and the news serves as a far greater sledgehammer than even the strongest cup of coffee can provide.

Click! Franco Harris passes away two days before the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception, three days before the Steelers are going to retire his No 32 jersey … and a day after regaling Christopher Russo for a half hour on the radio with his recollections of that forever game.

Click! James Dolan is caught doing James Dolan things, kicking a lawyer chaperoning her daughter out of Radio City, reminding us that Ebenezer Scrooge was not merely the product of Charles Dickens’ wicked imagination.

Click! Steve Cohen signs Carlos Correa in the middle of the night to a 12-year, $315 million contract to play third base after Correa’s deal with the Giants fell through based on an unknown.

And if you’re a Mets fan, as much as those other news items might’ve shocked you, it’s the Correa deal that really takes your breath away.

Not that this should be at all surprising, of course. We say it all the time: when someone reveals himself as to who he is, believe him. And from the second Cohen was announced as the Mets’ new owner, he made little pretense about who he was: a Mets fan with deep pockets, deep enough to fulfill the wishes and needs of a starving baseball team and his own boundless ambitions.


  Mets owner Steve Cohen outside Citi Field on April 15, 2022. Corey Sipkin Mets owner Steve Cohen outside Citi Field on April 15, 2022. Corey Sipkin

Yes, early on he had the famous quote about not spending like a “drunken sailor,” and later he told The Post’s Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman that a team should be able to compete on a $300 million budget. And there have been, and will be, plenty who will regale in bringing those sound bites up every time the Mets go on a losing streak or fail to win a World Series. Cohen has no shortage of enemies, after all, and whatever ties the Mets had to their goofy-but-fun-loving past have now officially been severed by Cohen’s checkbook.

But if you are a Mets fan, you ask yourself this morning: Do you care about that?

Even a little?


  Mets COO Jeff Wilpon (L) and majority owner Fred Wilpon Getty Images Mets COO Jeff Wilpon (L) and majority owner Fred Wilpon Getty Images

What quote would you rather have thrown back at you: one modestly (and falsely) proclaiming you won’t act like an inebriated seaman, or Fred Wilpon’s classic wish to play “meaningful September games” — something that, way more often than not, proved to be every bit as laughable as Cohen’s pledge of relative fiscal restraint?

In truth, the most accurate quote from Cohen is the one his television alter ego, Bobby Axelrod, provided thanks to the brilliance of “Billions” creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien.

“What’s the point of having f–k you money,” Ax tells his nemesis, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades, “if you never say f–k you?”


  Carlos Correa Getty Images Carlos Correa Getty Images

And that, really, should replace “Meet the Mets” as the team’s fight song, don’t you think? The Mets, with Correa, are now projected to have a payroll of $491.424 million — with more than $109 million of that in luxury-tax penalties alone.

You know what that is?

That’s f–k you money.

It will not heighten his popularity among that faction of baseball’s ownership class that was openly worried about letting the Ax — er, the fox — in the henhouse. It may well affect his BFF status with Hal Steinbrenner, since this news relegates Wednesday’s Aaron Judge press conference to a footnote. A move executed perfectly, copyrighted by Hal’s old man — stealing the back page clean, like Willie Sutton in a vault.

And there are those who truly despise Cohen, many from his hedge-fund world — trust me, I hear from them as much as I do from spam-ad e-mailers — who will scream from the highest mountain peaks and roar into the subway stations. All of them are entitled. All of them may even have a point.

But if you are a Mets fan?

After decades of ownership that behaved like Mets games should be datelined “Des Moines?” After no less than 30 years of leadership that willingly and willfully allowed the Yankees to dominate the city — on the field, in the newspaper, on the radio, at the merchandise shack? After using Ax’s favorite expletive time and again in frustration rather than defiance?

Yeah. Find me a Mets fan who doesn’t prefer this better. Good morning to you folks, indeed.

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