Forbes: The Mets and Dodgers will soon be selling their office furniture

Forbes's annual blitz of MLB -- featuring Andrew ("Baseball and Billions") Zimbalist -- brings revelations (Basically, saying the Yankees are baseball's wealthiest team doesn't count; it's like saying the Atlantic Ocean is "moist.") regarding two prime denizens of our traditional shitlist: The Dodgers and Mets are running on fumes.

My fave top 10 lines (for real) from the Forbes report:

1. "Selig, derisively known as “the Steroid Commissioner” for the blind eye he turned toward the artificial bulking up of the players throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, now faces the possibility of becoming known as “the Debt Commissioner.”

2. "The situation with the Mets looks particularly bleak."


3. "Over nearly two decades the Mets’ owners withdrew $94 million of other people’s money from the Mets-related accounts at Madoff’s investment firm."

4. "What’s clear from the court documents is that Frank McCourt used the team (Dodgers) as collateral to rack up $459 million in debt from 2004 to 2009."

5. "McCourt took $108 million of the money in personal distributions and funneled it into the couple’s real estate purchases. It also 'supported the couple’s very expensive lifestyle.'"

6. "The McCourts bought eight houses across the country, including a $28 million Malibu mansion."

7. "In 2006 McCourt turned two of the stadium’s parking lots into a separate company, then took a $60 million loan against it. He used $12 million of that on the team and took the rest of the money."


8. "It doesn’t help that many of the Dodgers’ deferred player salaries, like the $20 million still owed to former outfielder Manny Ramirez, are coming due."

9. "The Mets are unlikely to replace much of the $60 million in salaries that comes off its books after 2011."


10. "The Dodgers’ payroll slipped to twelfth in the league last year, behind the small-market Minnesota Twins."