Customer Reviews

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

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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. Charles Shipman Payson without any sense of irony), and reprints some of manager Casey Stengel's unforgettable monologues. He talks about the business of baseball, even in 1963 lamenting that too many were in it for the money, and not for the love of the game.

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!

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.

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. The best Breslin manages to offer is they're like the chipped table you wouldn't trade for a new one because you're used to it already, never mind in 1962 the Mets were the new table, chipped or not.

Another problem with the book is that it is written almost exclusively for New Yorkers of the early 1960s, who already knew the story and didn't need to have the facts established. He doesn't bother explaining who Joe E. Lewis was, or Toots Shor, because you're supposed to know. They weren't Mets, by the way, but nightlife figures Breslin was friendly with and wanted to say hello to by giving each a page in his book.

Occasionally he says something funny, or poignant. Breslin tends to do this when he rambles long enough, and his declamatory-as-a-slammed-door prose certainly has readability and bite. He offers a terrific strand of thought on how following baseball makes you realize how fast time passes as you get older, noting his surprise about how fast Gil Hodges went from promising rookie to broken-down legend. There's good information about the Mets' origin after the Giants and Dodgers left New York City, and I enjoyed Breslin calling Walter O'Malley to account for his mendacious greed.

But for the most part Breslin's targets aren't the wealthy or powerful; but a band of luckless journeymen who discovered winning wasn't everything when it came to creating a legend for their fans. It's a story worth telling; unfortunately Breslin can't get past roasting them for easy yucks and leaves the human factor out of the equation.

The paperback reissue of Jimmy Breslin's CAN'T ANYBODY HERE PLAY THIS GAME? is 117 pages, plus appendices. A photo section that accompanies the original hardcover edition has been deleted.

For a taste of this highly enjoyable reminsicence of a legendary team's first season (1962), here's a couple of quotes from Chapter 1. Whether they're literal or invented by the author is for you to decide.


In 1961, the newly-organized expansion team hired Rogers Hornsby to scout both leagues to see what players would be available. All clubs had to give up two men each to the new Mets and Colt 45s.

Rajah worked from his home base in Chicago. Seeing American League games wasn't a problem as the White Sox played mostly at night, but all of the Cubs games were in the afternoon, and this was cutting heavily into Hornsby's time for racetrack plunging, a real annoyance for him.

Here's a comment about other clubs' possible castoffs that Hornsby made one Wrigley Field afternoon:

"They say we're going to get players out of a grab bag. From what I seen, it's going to be a garbage bag. Ain't nobody got fat off eating out of the garbage, and that's just what the Mets is going to have to do. This is terrible. I mean, this is really going to be bad."

So tell us what you REALLY think, Raj!
Was he ever right! Their first season, the NY Mets lost 120 games, doing so in the most creatively colorful way in baseball history.


On the occasion of his 73rd birthday, manager Casey Stengel drew thoughtfully on a cigarette, sipped a Manhattan at a hotel bar and recalled a particularly shocking game. He told of bringing a catcher up from Syracuse who could possibly control action on the basepath against a steal-intensive Dodgers club:

"...I don't want to be embarrassed. So we bring him and he is going to throw out these runners.

"We come in there and you never seen anything like it in your life. I find I got a defensive catcher, only who can't catch the ball. The pitcher throws. Wild pitch. Throws again. Passed ball. Throws again. Oops! The ball drops out of the glove. And all the time I am dizzy on account of these runners running around in circles on me and so forth.

"Makes a man think. You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, 'Can't anybody here play this game?' "

I agree that this book needs to be reissued. It's a gem. Jimmy Breslin writes story after hilarious story about the inept, hopeless but lovable '62 Mets. Marvelous Marv, Choo-Choo Coleman - they're all there, including the great one-liners of Casey Stengel. Please, Please, Please reissue this book. It would sell a million copies.

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 sport.

A delight,

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 - Stengelese - to the confusion of one and all, and NY was still the capital of the world. A rollicking ride through a comedy of errors and flakes.

Is this the only book on the 1962 New York Mets? It seems so and Jimmy Breslin did a pretty good job. At least his book is better than that lousy expansion team of 1962 with 40 wins and 120 losses. Is it written well? I would say better than Marvelous Marv Throneberry at first base for that dreadful 1962 team. The book takes you through from the beginning -- the need for a team in New York in the National League after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants cut out for the west coast. It's all pretty interesting, although we hear Breslin committed a few errors of his own in producing the book. Like the title of the book is an invented quote from manager Casey Stengel. Like the first run against the Mets was not scored on a balk, but actually a base-hit by Stan Musial. Oh well, the team he was writing about committed far more errors in that first year of play. Do I recommend the book? You betcha. Has as much flavor as a Kahn's hot dog. Pass me a Rheingold and enjoy the book. Amazing!

There have been many benchmarks for sports futility. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 0-14 in their inaugural season. The 2008 Detroit Lions were 0-16. The 1973 Philadelphia 76'ers won only nine games. But the 1962 New York Mets seem to be the standard for incompetence.

Maybe it was the carnival atmosphere surrounding this first year juggernaut. Or maybe it was the way they seemed to be laughing at themselves as they spun further into the cellar.

Jimmy Breslin has graced every type of writing he put his writing hand to, and sports is at the top. Although a thin tome (117 pages), it left this reader begging for more.

I wanted more Casey Stengell witticisms, as he oscillated between exasperation and dead on humor at his predicament. I wanted more Marv Throneberry anti-hero tales. I wanted to read more about the battered and bruised, but ultimately noble pitching trio of Roger Craig, Larry Bearnearth and Al Jackson.

The interesting thing is that this team spawned some of the great baseball minds of the generation to come. Gil Hodges managed the Mets to the 1969 World Series. Roger Craig became a pitching coach par excellance, and an excellent manager. Al Jackson was a pitching coach for many years.

This was a team that New York fell in love with. They were decent, family people, who respected and genuinely liked each other. They just weren't any good, and their creativity in finding ways to lose games was off the charts.

They were the only major league team to play .250 ball over a whole season, and more amazingly, they won 9 of 12 games in one stretch, meaning the rest of their season they went 31-117.

Breslin nails the scoundrels of the National League on how they forced the sewerage of the dregs of every organization on the Mets. His writing is hilarious at times, and this was a story that was begging to told.

Any baby boomer baseball fan would enjoy this book.

An outstanding sports writer did an outstanding job of capturing the essence of the first year of New York Met baseball.
For those of us who lived through that magnificent demonstration of ineptness, we can recall how easy it was to follow the antics of a team that lost three times for every time that they won but found new and improbable ways to do so almost every day.
Breslin captures the hilarity that characterized the efforts of this team to play a game that was not as new to them as it sometimes seemed to be. The reader also feels the pain of some of the top players of the sport who ended their careers in something less than glory that year.

The reader for whom this is history will enjoy this crisply written story and learn the names of some of the heros of that first year who may not have left marks on the game of baseball but certainly left more than a few smudges.
Still as good a sports read as the day it was written.