Customer Reviews

The Magnificent Seasons: How the Jets, Mets, and Knicks Made Sports HIstory and Uplifted a City and the Country

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

really enjoyed this book as it brought back highlights from a very important year
in my life. i was 11, and the upset wins by mets and jets really encouraged me
to apply myself in life to improving my limited athletic abilities, and to learn
about the games, and follow sports for the rest of my life. these sports lessons
carried-over to effort in real life and later successes(not athletic, though).

it also pictured that remarkable year ( 1969, mets/jets/knicks/moon landing/woodstock) within the frame-work of the horrible events of 1968. the political instability, vietnam war, and worsening economy weighed heavily even on my young mind, and having things so positive happen really helped.
i haven't even mentioned that the beatles were still together, am radio
was fantastic, and laugh-in helped teach me political humor.

i realize this review is more about me that the book , but that is the influence
that 1969 had on me, and how this book brought back those memories.
these underdog triumphs of real life are better than the sappy, made-up hollywood endings.

i am not a writer , as is obvious by this review, and won't/can't discuss this on
it's literary merits. i'll just re-iterate it's underdogs winning and remembrances
of a special year as the reasons i give 5 stars

I became a New York sports fan just after the Mets won the World Series, and just in time to be captivated by the Knicks and their championship season. So this book was already a winner with me.

Much of the stuff here I'd heard already, but it was still fun to revisit. And while the book's promise to examine the three New York championships against the backdrop of what was going on in the rest of the nation and world at the time doesn't draw any deep conclusions (most everybody says the same thing--it was good for the people), overall it is a fun read.

What's not so good is that the book is in bad need of a copy editor. Some of a copy editor's job is to question statements that don't make sense or are missing information, and to eliminate redundant information. For example, in recounting the second playoff game against the Braves, we learn that the final score was 11-6, but we're not told who won. Twice we're told that Ron Taylor never got the recognition he deserved. Gaul Papelian is identified as Red Holzman's daughter several times, when once would have been enough. And a famous story about Frank Robinson calling Rod Gaspar "Ron Stupid" is mis-told and incomplete.

What I also found annoying is the propensity to put words in quotation marks to emphasize them; "the whole shootin' match; "magnificent seasons"; "threesome." Such folksiness is unnecessary and stops the reader dead in his tracks.

I think this is a good book; with proper copy editing, it could have been that much better.