Customer Reviews

The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth, and Subtext

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

 

 

This book is a personal meditation on baseball and, as such, includes digressions, flights of fancy, and mythical representations of the sport. In his prefatory note, the author says: "...I wanted to capture the whole sweep of Mets history, so I went through my old experimental-prose volumes and unpublished writings and located several fragments about the 1962, 1969, 1971, 1973, and 1975-1977 Mets. ... I retained the style of their time, including sentence fragments, nonparallel clauses, and the alternative spelling "thru.""

Yes, as a previous reviewer points out, the book incorrectly gives the date of Willie Mays' famous over-the shoulder catch as 1951 (a typographical error, I imagine), but it is described in greater detail later in the text, giving the accurate date of 1954. But a focus on such minutiae misses the point. The book is not about the literal; it is a work of the imagination.

An often brilliantly written recollection of the author's life as a baseball fan and sometimes player, particularly noted for his keen one-line opinion of various Mets' players. He does mention some facts never known to this life-long Mets' fan such as Davey Johnson's recommendation to Frank Cashen that the Mets take Texas League pitcher Orel Hershiser in the rule 5 draft.

What this book clearly is not is a history or in-depth profile of the Mets. The one player who rates more than a chapter is not Dwight Gooden, Darrell Strawberry, Mike Piazza, or even Ed Kranepool (all of whom barely get a mention), but rather Terry Leach whose unexpected major league success is meant to point out how scouts and GM's value results much less than "tools".

Yes, there are misprints and probably some clouded remembrances, but if you are a longtime Mets' fan who wants to supplement your reading with something unique that celebrates the fascination with the game rather than statistics or history, I would highly recommend this book.

I purchased the book at my local book store with high hopes. Initially the photo of Endy's catch caught my attention. (One of the greatest moments at Shea eventhough the Mets lost the game!). I read the index and saw that the book was not just dedicated to the 2006 season, which appealed to me.

However, when I began reading, I felt no connection to the author or the text. There were several inconsistencies and I immediately lost interest. The writing was choppy and boring.

I tried skipping to other chapters, and was equally disappointed. Even if you are a hard core mets fan, stay away from this book.

This book had a lot of promise as I thumbed through it, but after 20 pages I had to put it down. There were several glaring errors that made this book unreadable. Willie Mays' catch off Vic Wertz in the '51 Series? C'mon, who checked this? I guess having myth in the title has given the author creative license...