Customer Reviews

The New York Mets Encyclopedia

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

 

 

I guess it's pretty easy to call something an encyclopedia these days. Most teams have them, and this one is inferior to most of the others I've seen. First, its 320 pages pales in comparison. Secondly, the last hundred pages could have been condensed into about a dozen.
Most egregious of all are the errors, and there are quite a few. Rusty Staub's bio refers to him as a "third sacker." The caption of the Willie Mays photo on pg. 154 says he "receives a shower in the aftermath of the 1969 division-clinching victory."
For the most part, the bios in the book are unoriginal and stale, particularly for anyone with even a rudimentary background in the history of the Mets. If you have any of the books this one claims to be "designed to overhaul and supplant," you need not buy this one.
On the positive side are the photos from the George Brace collection which pepper the book. It is a welcome change from the usual sources of period photography, Photo File and the Mets themselves.
I don't know if author Peter C. Bjarkman has read the Phillies Encyclopedia, but it should be the next thing he sees when another idea like this comes along. And Sports Publishing, Inc. has done little to assuage the fears that it has become the McPublisher of Sports Literature.
I am very disappointed.

this book kept getting delayed for nearly two years, and i had thought it was to make sure it would be thorough and correct. boy, was i ever wrong!

this is a total disaster. just a cursory reading and i noticed a dozen factual errors. i mean: listing billy taylor among the all-time season saves leaders? thats only symptomatic of the shoddy workmanship that went into this book. any longtime mets fan (and ive been there since the beginning) would be able to do a better job than this.

do NOT go near this outrageously overpriced pile of dross! it is as valuable to a mets fan as -- well, as kevin mcreynolds!

BOO! HISS!

This encyclopedia does does not appear to be up to the necessary standard for a team encyclopedia. Numerous errors that even a non-Mets fan, such as myself, was able to spot. Additionally, the prose is jerky and the tone is overly familiar.

It does not seems appropriate that Dr. Bjarkman reviews his own book and rates it 5 stars on this page.

Finally! I have been waiting and waiting forever for this to come out! Now I am glad it did! It is not a bad encyclopedia but I would have liked it to be more acurate.

Peter Bjarkman has published more than thirty-five books on baseball and basketball history. The New York Mets Encyclopedia is his latest work and presents the Mets fan and sports historian with an exhaustive, 325 page encyclopedia covering all aspects of the New York Mets baseball team, profusely illustrated with two hundred photographs. Bjarkman's informative and authoritative essays and profuse statistical tables make The New York Mets Encyclopedia a "must" for all devoted Mets fans and sports bar trivia buffs.

Each reader is entitled to his own opinion and readers' reviews are often a useful guide. The review of the Mets Encyclopedia by Brooklyn's Fletcher Rabbit is, however, an example of the silliness to which such freewheeling reader reviews can slump. Yes, it is true that the Mets Encyclopedia contains a handful of typographical errors that slipped through the editorial process (as often happens with the best of scholarly books). One photo caption has Bobby Thomson's name mispelled and Billy Taylor did erronously make it onto a list of single-season save leaders because his 1999 totals include his 26 saves with Oakland before he was traded to NY. But the book was indeed carefully researched and provides some highly entertaining accounts of Mets history. Mets fans and baseball readers in general will hopefully judge it on its larger merits. If a small handful of typos were enough to pan a book there would be few baseball histories that would ever pass muster. Read this one and judge for yourself. The author.