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Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Met's First Year [Paperback]

Jimmy Breslin , Bill Veeck
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

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Book Description

November 4, 2002
Here, back in print, is Jimmy Breslin's marvelous account of the improbable saga of the New York Mets' first year, as Bill Veeck notes in his Introduction, "preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure." Indeed the 1962 Mets were the worst major league baseball team ever to take the field. (The title of the book is a quote from Casey Stengel, their manager at the time.) Breslin casts the Mets, who lost 120 games out of a possible 162 that year, as a lovable bunch of losers. And, he argues, they were good for baseball, coming as a welcome antidote to "the era of the businessman in sports...as dry and agonizing a time as you would want to see." Although they were written forty years ago, many of Breslin's comments will strike a chord with today's sports fan, fed up with the growing commercialism of the games. Against this trend Breslin sets the exploits of "Marvelous" Marv Throneberry, Stengel, and the rest of the hapless Mets.
"Wonderful."—Charles Salzberg, New York Times.
"A touching, enjoyable, and interesting addition to anybody's sports reading list."—Patrick Conway

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Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Met's First Year + Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories (Vintage International)
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Ivan R. Dee; Reprint edition (November 4, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1566634881
  • ISBN-13: 978-1566634885
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #315,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Part sports, part politics, all New York, it tells the story of the American metropolis changing with the help of the likes of Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Choo Choo Coleman. (Dermot McEvoy Publishers Weekly)

Breslin's well-written book remains a hilarious read. (Jeff Diamant Newark Star Ledger)

A magnificent account of the 1962 New York Mets; their first season in existence. (New York Sun)

From the Publisher

A vivid history of the Mets, preserving for all time a wonderful look at New York's other team. This excellent read is written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Ivan R. Dee; Reprint edition (November 4, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1566634881
  • ISBN-13: 978-1566634885
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #315,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars The Met Mystique March 13, 2004
Format:Paperback
For years author Jimmy Breslin claimed that "Can't anybody here play this game?" was an actual quote from New York Met manager Casey Stengel. Then several years later in another book that he wrote, Breslin admitted he had made up the quote. When I read his book "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game," I got the impression he used this same approach in writing it. Not that the book isn't mostly true, but what he wrote was for effect. It appeared to me that he wanted to inject a lot of humor and light-heartedness and not necessarily provide a well-rounded description of the season where that would detract from his intended perspective.

That the first run that the 1962 Mets allowed in a regular season game was scored on a balk makes for a great story and is so in line with the Mets image of whimsical ineptness. Breslin?s description of how the balk occurred- who was pitching, who was on base, that the pitcher dropped the ball while trying to pitch- made me believe that that was what happened. But that wasn?t what happened. Later I read on the Internet (and I confirmed it by listening to the original audio broadcast of the game) that the first run scored off the Mets was on a bloop single by Stan Musial. Sometimes fact is not stranger than fiction.

I admit when I read the book I was disappointed- particularly during the first half of the book. I was hoping to read a book providing lots of insight and information about the Mets first season of baseball- such as what Stanley Cohen's wonderful book "A Magic Summer" does for the 1969 Mets. But that's not with this book is all about. It's really more about the Met mystique of the early years as lovable losers. And that mystique is something special about Met history....

The point of this book review isn't to recommend the book or not (it is a very popular book), but it is to help the potential reader avoid having erroneous expectations. Read more ›

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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A timely reprint! May 10, 2003
Format:Paperback
Last week, the Dodgers came to Shea Stadium. There's not a ballplayer left alive, except Jesse Orosco, who was born before the Dodgers left Brooklyn, but the residual anti-Dodger resentment which inhabits the ugly orange, blue, green and red seats at Shea still makes these games interesting. The score was tied, 1-1 in the 6th, and LA had runners at first and third, with one out. The batter hit a ground ball to Mets SS Rey Sanchez, less known for his .179 batting average than for reportedly getting a haircut in the clubhouse while the Mets getting clobbered in another loss. Sanchez needed to do just two thing with that grounder, which was too slow to turn into a double play. He needed to A) look the runner back to third and prevent the go-ahead run from scoring, and B) throw the batter out at first.

Sanchez, of course, failed to do either.

The runner on third scored (the winning run) and the batter was safe. Sound familiar?

Jimmy Breslin's 1963 magazine-feature-length rumination on the woeful 1962 Mets (who lost 120 games -- more than the 1985 and '86 Mets lost *combined*) has fallen out of the baseball consciousness for a while. But it's still hilarious. The book is both a celebration of the underdog, and a scathing review of the National League's expansion process, which allowed for the creation of a new team full of players who simply couldn't play.

It takes a while for Breslin to actually get into game descriptions. He talks at length about the building of Shea Stadium (which, true to Mets form, was completed a year late, and way, way over budget) -- "which they are building... for Marvin Throneberry". He talks about original Mets owner Joan Whitney Payson (be warned that, since this book was written in 1963, she's still referred to as Mrs....

Finally, Breslin gets to his recap of the Mets season, and gets it wrong from the very first inning. He repeats -- actually, he creates -- the myth that the first run scored against the Mets in their first game, in St. Louis, came in when pitcher Roger Craig balked with runner Bill White on third. Well, that never happened. It happened, but it was already 1-0 at that point and White wasn't on third. Since Breslin makes a big fetish of his scorecard later in the book, I have to assume this is dramatic license.

Breslin's book is now 40 years old, but if you went into a time capsule in '63 and came out again this April, you'd never realize that, for most of their history, the Mets were not actually this horrible. When I have the choice of watching the Mets (who, in mid-May have already lost 60% of their games), or re-reading the epic saga of Pumpsie Green... well, just give me some more Pumpsie! Read more ›

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Breslin's Bullying Wears Thin June 14, 2007
Format:Paperback
How bad were the 1962 New York Mets? Let Jimmy Breslin count the ways. The Gotham City columnist tells the story of the baseball team's inaugural season in this 1963 book that left me with a few laughs and a sour taste in my mouth.

Breslin here is like the best man at a wedding who does the dinner speech about the groom's sexual misadventures, who keeps going after everyone else realizes he's spent too much time polishing his act at the bar. Breslin can't get enough of telling you how bad the team is, telling stories of questionable veracity in order to serve his need for cruel punchlines about this or that player's total ineptitude. It's a one-note performance that gets tiring long before this short book is over, but Breslin never notices.

One Met in particular draws Breslin's notice so much it makes you squirm. "Marvelous Marv was holding down first base. This is like saying Willie Sutton works at your bank." "Marvin Throneberry's teammates would have given him a cake for his birthday except they were afraid he would drop it." Or quoting Ralph Houk: "If he ever played that way for me, I'd of killed him with my bare hands."

There aren't a lot of quotes in "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" and those you get seem suspiciously jewel-cut as zingers for one of Breslin's stories. I'm not saying the guy made it all up. The Mets did lose 120 games in 1962, a modern major league record that still stands, and they did so in some mind-boggling ways, several of which Breslin no doubt got right. But there's a validity that's missing here.

Breslin never gets past the ridicule to get at the heart of what the Mets were about that first year, why they drew nearly a million fans to the disintegrating Polo Grounds and inspired such bizarre and merry glee.
... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Breslin at His Best
The great Jimmy Breslin was hitting his stride in the early 1960s with the publication of this book on the hapless inaugural year of the New York Mets. Read more
Published 2 months ago by D.P. Brennan
5.0 out of 5 stars Love it!
I bought this as a gift for my Dad. He loved it! It was in great shape and very affordable!
Published 5 months ago by Jess
3.0 out of 5 stars Moderately amusing, moderately interesting...
...but nothing to write home about. I finished it. It was mildly entertaining. The humor seemed a bit dated, as you might expect from a 50 year old book. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mortimer Snerd
3.0 out of 5 stars Breslin's Take on the Amazing Mets is Mildly Amusing
I have to admit that I'd previously heard some of the amusing anecdotes from Jimmy Breslin's book on the hapless New York Mets. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mike Reuther
4.0 out of 5 stars A witty look at baseball history
Breslin's tells the story of the year the Mets were founded, the people behind the business side and the heartbreaking but very humorous details of 140 losses in this first year. Read more
Published 13 months ago by rob1130
1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written
Like most books published in the 1960s and early 1970s meant for popular consumption, this one was poorly written. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Bellcrank
5.0 out of 5 stars "The Mets is a very good thing. They give everybody a job. Just like...
The paperback reissue of Jimmy Breslin's CAN'T ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS GAME? is 117 pages, plus appendices. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Annie Van Auken
4.0 out of 5 stars Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?
Jimmy Breslin, with his unique Irish humor and his knowledge of baseball and New York tells great story with warmth and fun of the most improbable team in the history of the... Read more
Published on March 16, 2011 by Alma C Mulligan
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Baseball Classic
Written in Jimmy Breslin's memorable "NY voice", this book recalls an era when a team could be a loser and the players still be lovable, a manager could speak his own language -... Read more
Published on January 21, 2011 by George S. Leibson
4.0 out of 5 stars Home run of a book
Is this the only book on the 1962 New York Mets? It seems so and Jimmy Breslin did a pretty good job. Read more
Published on January 17, 2011 by Alton J. Bliss
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