Customer Reviews

The Worst Team Money Could Buy: The Collapse of the New York Mets

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I was born a Met fan and will remain one as long as the Mets exist. As I type this, I'm listening to Fred Wilpon talk about how Art Howe is going to turn the Mets around. This after the 2002 Mets, the team with the third highest payroll in baseball, finished last in the National League East.

My thoughts, naturally, turn to this book.

At the end of the abyssmal 1992 season for the New York Mets, Bob Klapisch and John Harper--beat writers for the NY Post and NY Daily News--felt the need to rant, to give the fans the necessary information to answer the question "how could this have happened?" The highest payrolled team in the history of baseball, the team that made Bobby Bonilla the highest paid player ever, finished with the third lowest record in the National League. I mean, we had David Cone, Dwight Gooden and Sid Fernandez in our starting rotation! We got Bobby Bonilla to replace Darryl Strawberry! That ring should have been ours!

Any Met fan reading the above knows what happened on the surface (and what continued to happen in 1993 and --UCK-- 1994), but the deeper story is nastier still.

This book lifts the rock on the Mets and what is crawling underneath is not pretty. The egos alone are ridiculous, but throw in the infighting, the firecrackers, the rape accusations, the press lockouts, and the non-stop party attitude that looks from here like Animal House without the humor.

You've got to feel sorry for Jeff Torborg and Buddy Harrelson, who didn't have a chance with this pack. As you'll see, though, the owner and General Managers also get their due.

NOW I want to see the 2002 edition of this book. This book proved to me that there is tons of stuff that go on behind the scenes. What happened in 2002?

It's also nice to reminisce about a time when sports writers didn't pull as many punches with their writing. Nobody is spared; the GM, the owners, past managers, players, etc.

Not to knock ESPN which is not local enough, or radio commentary like "Mike & The Maddog" which I believe to be too much a mouthpiece of the team, but this book also stands up as a testament to newspaper coverage which goes into more and better detail than cable can offer.

These guys bled Blue and Orange every day from spring training to the end of the year because it was their job. When that blood went bad, they wrote this book. As a Met fan, let me say "Thank You". This book takes that coverage to the next power. It is something you do not see enough of.

The only real flaw in this book is that it could have been a little better organized. The chronology is a bit vague; background-setting flashbacks show up and go on for pages until you've forgotten what you're getting background on. It is a minor quip, though, and I didn't even notice it until subsequent readings.

This book will probably shock you, but you should still pick it up.

Bobby Valentine once said something like, "They play 162 seasons a year in New York," and that statement pretty much sums up a baseball man's attitude toward the press. One morning--in April, yet--the season's blown and the reporters are offering up postmortems. The next day, after a victory, the team's back on the right track. Having read New York sportswriting for the past thirty years I can pretty much understand why a ballplayer might want to strangle reporters. They frustrate _me_ with their insistence on answers to questions like, "Why'd you groove that fastball?" or "What made you drop that ball?" Who knows. Who cares. It's that sort of "hard-nosed" reporting that's bred the current generation of colorless and introspective ballplayers who talk in platitudes about "getting the job done." And as authors Klapisch and Harper inadvertantly show, much of the reporters' antagonistic attitude stems from the huge salaries players earn. You can fall on one side of this issue or the other. I've always thought the players should earn whatever the market will bear, whether they're schmucks or not. I've met a lot of people in my life, and many of them have turned out to be successful and even famous and have excelled in many various occupations, but I've never met a single soul who could play baseball at the major league level. It's that rare. Only 750 men can do it. In writing about, shall we say, underachieving ballplayers at the dawn of this big-money era (Bobby Bonilla [here all Mets fans groan] had just signed with the team for a then-insane salary of $29 million over five years) Klapisch and Harper reveal hard hearts and a lot of hostility toward established stars.

Generally, the book's mainly a litany of complaints about the difficulty of the job: the travel, the deadlines, the demands of the editors, the refusal of players, management, and the front office to speak openly to the press, etc. The fourth or fifth iteration of this--the two authors take turns writing "sidebars" that appear adjacent to the main text in which they bitch about how hard it is to navigate the rocky shoals of a clubhouse occupied by "spoiled millionaires" (BOY these guys have a problem with that)--makes the reader want to toss the book across the room. Klapisch and Harper actually try to make the case that not delivering a juicy headline-worthy story drives their respective tabloids "one day closer to extinction." Reminds me of the old Abbott and Costello routine where Abbott berates Costello for not eating mustard. "The man who makes that mustard--he'll be out of a job! How about his family, Costello? How're they gonna pay the rent if you won't eat mustard on your frankfurter?" The ballplayers should have eaten the mustard, I guess, and spilled their guts.

If you're a Mets fan, this is a depressing book, because it simply highlights a cyclical aspect of Metsdom: years of promise the mostly remain unfulfilled interspersed with dismal, last-place years in which the ownership first runs the team off the rails and then makes a series of ill-considered moves to restore it. Mo Vaughn, meet Bobby Bonilla. Guys, here's George Foster. Somehow, just a few years after winning, the Mets always seem to be fielding a triple A team, and in capturing that--by the end of the '92 season, which this book focuses on, most of the starting lineup was on the DL--the writers do a good job. They also succeed in capturing the malaise of a losing team's clubhouse, and in analyzing some of the piss-poor decisions of front office management, such as in hiring Jeff Torborg to take over the team. Art Howe, anyone? George Bamberger? Wes Westrum?

I can imagine that this book would appeal to a broader audience than merely Mets fans. It's a good study of pathology, of sports psychology, and of the peculiar symbiosis between the media and their subjects--because, as this book demonstrates, the actual reporting of the events of the game are secondary to the reporting the intrigue backstage.

The competition between newspapers in the New York market of the late '80s and early '90s was a precursor to 24-hour sports networks and the Internet in terms of bringing the personal and the issues of the locker room to the fore. Every paper was printing a game story, so the way to distinguish your coverage was to get the office politics, the behind-the-scenes stuff -- Vince Coleman and the golf club. David Cone and the allegations. Sid Fernandez in the doghouse. Buddy Harrelson, the manager who lost control. Bobby Bonilla and everybody. While the player stuff was interesting, I found this much more intriguing as a study of mass media and competition, and just as valid now as ever. A must-read for anyone interested in sports journalism.

Money isn't everything - and the money paid to the star talent the Mets had in Bobby Bonilla, Eddie Murray, Vince Coleman, etc., proves it. Especially when the money certain players earn is being spent on partying - one way to help your team finish last. Worth reading just for what Ron Darling said about Frank Viola's cross-country flight activities.

As a hardcore baseball fan, this book appealed to me in a big way. I went in expecting a decent read but surprisingly, my expectations were exceeded. It's one of the best baseball books I've ever read, a much more engaging read than Bouton's highly acclaimed 'Ball Four'.
We get inside an ugly Mets clubhouse in the early 90s. Warts get peeled off and there are many. Rape accusations, uptight managers (Torborg's no drinking on flights rule comes to mind) and inadequate upper management decisions are just some of the higlights.
From Gregg Jefferies prima-donna, wunderkind status (and ultimate bust) to Vince Coleman's proclamation that the turf at Shea Stadium will ultimately be the reason that he is kept out of the Hall of Fame, this book is a great page turner.
The only guy you end up taking a liking to is David Cone, and he was hardly a saint.
Highly recommended, and I'm not even a Mets fan.

The book talks about the 1992 New York Mets which was full of overpaid underachievers who were expected to get into the World Series after finishing below .500 in 1991 for the first time since 1983. It shows the apparent rape and other sexual charges to players like Vince Coleman, Daryl Boston, David Cone and Doc Gooden. It showed the Mets of '92 did more off the field then on the field and you can tell by there record and the fans of New York were outraged that a proud franchise would sink to this level and not succedd. Its a very good book, every Mets fan should have it.

It's nice to read a book by two people who were right there, up close to the team. The descriptions of the personalities, situations, and events are so vivid. The book basically backs up what was reported about the team, the manager, and the players throughout the season. It's everything that wasn't fit to print in a newspaper. Great reading!

This read is terrific at giving an insider's account of a baseball season. Klapisch and Harper show not only what it is like to work as sports writers but also what it is like to cover a huge franchise in a big city where the media coverage is mighty. The stories about the 1992 Mets are interesting and many of the issues (money, teamwork, injuries, poor management) probably resonate to sports teams even today. This is one of the better sports books around.

WORST TEAM MONEY CAN BUY IS ABOUT THE 1992 METS WHO HAD THE HIGHEST PAYROLL IN BASEBALL BUT WERE A HUGE FLOP. THE PARTYING, WOMEN, EGOS, AND MANY OTHER ON AND OFF FIELD DISTRUPTIONS PUT THE METS IN THE CELLAR. THE AUTHORS DO A GOOD JOB DIGGING INTO THE DIRT AND DETAILS OF THE MANY OVERPAID AND UNDER PRODUCTIVE PLAYERS WHO MADE UP THIS ABORTION OF A TEAM. FROM MANAGER JEFF(THE CHRISTIAN) TORBORG, BOBBY BO, DAVID CONE(HEAD) AND ALL THE REST OF THE CHARACTERS IT'S ALL THERE. I THINK THIS IS MOSTLY FOR TRUE DIE HARD MET AND BASEBALL FANS.