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SIMPLY AMAZING

Don’t call them New York’s other baseball team. Although they’re not as old and don’t have as many championship rings as their counterparts in the Bronx, the New York Mets have fans who are just as loyal. Now, with Amazin’ Met Memories: Four Decades of Unforgettable Moments by Howard Blatt ’75, Mets fans — and baseball fans in general — can relive the best memories of the team from Flushing, Queens.

Unlike most baseball books, Amazin’ Met Memories doesn’t offer a narrative or chronology of the team from its earliest days. Instead, Blatt has written a self-described “history of highs”: the 20 greatest post-season games, the 25 greatest regular season games, the all-time greatest Mets team. Blatt’s logic is simple: While a fan may forget how a player was obtained or even his career stats, no real Mets fan could ever forget Mookie Wilson’s grounder that skipped between Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

“Of all the baseball books out there, not one is based on memorable games, memorable moments,” says Blatt. Moreover, with 17 years separating the team’s two World Series championships (1969, 1986) and another 14 years before another World Series appearance, Blatt believes that “the only connection [between Mets teams] is the people who watch.” He’s tried to tap into fans’ “emotional connect” with the team and “personal memory of the game and the moment.”

Although he now lives in Maryland, Blatt is a native New Yorker, originally from the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn. His father was a Dodgers fan whose heart was broken when the team moved to Los Angeles in 1957, but who couldn’t shift his loyalties to the American League team from the Bronx. Blatt inherited his father’s affinity for the National League, and the Mets were the beneficiary.

Blatt, who was sports editor of Spectator during 1973–74, is well qualified to write about the Mets, and not just because he’s a die-hard fan. He spent 16 years at the New York Daily News, the last 10 as a sports writer covering the Mets as well as the Yankees, Knicks and Nets. He’s written 10 basketball books for young readers, including biographies of Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Gary Payton, and This Championship Season (Pocket Books, 1999) about the New York Yankees’ record-breaking 1998 season, when the team won 125 games.

After listing the greatest games in Mets history, Blatt adds a chapter about the Mets’ 3-2 victory over the Atlanta Braves at Shea Stadium on September 21, 2001, the first major outdoor sporting event in New York after the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers on September 11. Although the Mets were in the middle of a run at post-season play, as Blatt notes, the game was more “about patriotism as a response to terror and evil” and New York City’s resilience than baseball.

Blatt’s all-time Mets team includes first baseman Keith Hernandez, shortstop Bud Harrelson, catcher Mike Piazza and pitchers Tom Seaver and John Franco. His “all-time busts” includes such forgettable players as first baseman Marv Throneberry (1962–63), about whom writer Jimmy Breslin once said: “Having Marv Throneberry play for your team is like having Willie Sutton work for your bank.” There also are lists of the 15 best trades (such as obtaining Keith Hernandez in 1983 from the St. Louis Cardinals for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey) and 15 worst trades (starting with a four-player deal that sent a 24-year-old Nolan Ryan to the Angels for Jim Fregosi).

Another highlight of the book is the closing chapter, “You Can Look It Up,” a compilation of some of the great quotes in Mets history. Fittingly, the chapter begins with 20 pearls from the late Casey Stengel that are laugh-out-loud funny.

Amazin’ Met Memories: Four Decades of Unforgettable Moments is published by Albion Press

T.P.C.

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