Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets [Hardcover]

Ivan Felt (Author), Harris Conklin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006

Critic Ivan Felt and poet Harris Conklin are the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of baseball fandom. Or, perhaps, the Felix and Oscar of baseball fandom. Or the Pollock and de Kooning. Or the Bugs and Daffy.

The New York Mets are, of course, the New York Mets of baseball.

In 2005, Felt and Conklin, lifelong friends and lifelong fans, determined to change the course of their own careers and of baseball history by doing what had never been done: writing their beloved team to a World Championship. The 2005 Mets, with a new manager and some of the spiffiest free agents on the market, seemed ready to take the world by storm. Felt and Conklin believed themselves up to the task. It is, after all, Belief (and free agents) that makes such dreams come true.

Believeniks! is the record of a journey. Felt and Conklin would, alas, fail to see their team attain that golden pinnacle in the clouds of baseball glory. As Believeniks! reveals, however, the season’s unfolding drama would leave two of baseball’s most erudite and excitable fans forever changed.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Believeniks!

“This is a book about baseball in the way that Moby-Dick is a book about whaling; for Felt and Conklin, balls and strikes are quantifiers of hope and heartbreak. They understand what we all have to learn: that to strike out on a 3-2 count after fouling off half a dozen pitches is a good at-bat.” —David Gates, author of Jernigan

“If the writers sound in these pages like they have almost no hope, that’s because they don’t. They have only determination and unrealistic longing. Loving the Mets is like loving Esperanto or Betamax. It’s just kind of a bad idea. That’s what makes this book so tragicomic, so operatic, so human.” —Rick Moody, author of The Diviners

“It’s said that losing builds character, but it’s obvious that Ivan Felt and Harris Conklin were characters well before the ill-starred ’05 season. In a genre that’s often bloodless, they bare maybe too much of their hearts as the Amazins stumble down the stretch. Believeniks! is a funny, funky chronicle of their shared leap of faith into the abyss.”
—Stewart O’Nan, coauthor of Faithful

“John Cheever once said that all literary men are Red Sox fans; here to put the lie to that are Ivan Felt and Harris Conklin, whose Believeniks! is the best book of its kind since Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan’s Faithful. The Mets may only have warning-track power, but Felt and Conklin send Believeniks! screaming out of the yard.”
—Mark Winegardner, author of Crooked River Burning

“Like a seeing-eye single between short and third with a speedy runner dashing for the dish, Believeniks! scores just when you think the game should have been over. In that sense, it is archetypically, quintessentially Mets. One might say it is a Queens avatar.”
—Stephen King, coauthor of Faithful

“We may or may not be what we eat; but we are who we support, and Ivan Felt and Harris Cronklin are the New York Mets of literature. I am English, and was therefore unable to follow the Mets’ fortunes in 2005 with as much attention as I’d have liked. But I am sure Believeniks! is the tribute and testament that this venerable New York institution deserved.” —Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch

About the Author

Some are born to Mets fandom, others have it thrust upon them; born in Queens, in 1954, son of the first team doctor in Mets history, poet HARRIS CONKLIN claims both fates. Any fond memories of clubhouse hijinks are brief, alas, as his father was dismissed after failing to correctly diagnose a bone spur in the foot of Ed "The Original Met" Kranepool. A graduate of the City University of New York, he is a two-time fellow of the Chipwich Writer’s Colony. He presently teaches poetry and composition at Queens College, in Queens.



Born in 1953, IVAN FELT was raised in Greenwich Village. His parents—Albert, an accountant for the Textile Workers Union, and Sophie, a schoolteacher—were well-known as the folk duo “Albert and Sophie,” best remembered for their song “Two-Cent Plain.” Ivan, educated at NYU and Berkeley, is currently Alton Skutsch Carey Distinguished Professor of Commodity Aesthetics at Hunter College–CUNY and occupies space on the waiting lists of numerous middle income housing developments.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385517165
• ISBN-13: 978-0385517164
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,000,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Neither the pitching coach nor the po-mo novelist, May 21, 2006

By 

Dave Wallace - See all my reviews

This review is from: Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets (Hardcover)

I picked up this book with excitement but it turned out to be a total waste of time. I learned nothing about the Mets season OR felt it was a worthy contribution to baseball writing. Would have given it zero stars if Amazon let me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I'm not smart enough for this book, July 15, 2006

By 

Joe Z (Vestal, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets (Hardcover)

The book is basically an on-going writing conversation between two middle aged men named Ivan and Harris who have been friends and fellow Met fans for quite some time. Their conversation style is sophisticated and is certainly different than how your average sports fan talks. At times, its like listening to Dennis Miller when he made obscure references while broadcasting on Monday Night Football. Therefore, your average fantasy playing, diehard like myself is naturally going to lose interest at times. Its nice to rehash parts of the 2005 Mets season, and its even nicer at the points when their honest thoughts mirror your own. There are moments when you fondly remember small parts of the season. However, I found myself skipping through the non baseball talk, and therefore ended up missing the key point when Harris started courting and becoming engaged with Ivan's 20-something daughter. So, once I realized what was going on, I had to go back and reread. And it does get a bit fascinating when Ivan gives his backhanded blessing to the pending marriage, and it does give the reader the sense of awkwardness in being in the middle of a middle aged man dating the 20-something daughter of a lifelong friend.

Overall, the book is good for someone that considers themselves cultered and a Met fan. But if you're the average sports die hard, read Adam Rubin's book instead. I can best describe this as the movie Lost In Translation smashing into the 2005 Mets season.