They Said it Couldn't be Done, by Wayne Coffey
One of the drawbacks of reading history --especially the history that you can remember -- is that you know how it ends. But in the case of the World Champion 1969 Mets, that's a good thing.
Sportswriter Wayne Coffey returns to "the most astounding season in baseball history," according to the subtitle of his book. He recreates the story of the Amazing Mets, who in their first season seven years earlier had set a record for futility. But with a '69 team of some fine young ballplayers, coupled with a few grizzled veterans, all playing under the leadership of the incomparable Gil Hodges, the New Yorkers rose from the depths of despair to the top of the baseball world in the last year of the 1960s.
"More than a anything, in the same summer that two men walked on the moon, 400,000 men and women descended on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, and millions more all over the county were embroiled in a conflict about the war in Vietnam, the Mets embodied hope," Coffey writes. "They embodied possibility -- a belief that things could get better and would get better."
He tells their story by rewinding the season and its most important games, interspersed with vignettes of the people involved. Some stories are well known to any Mets' fan: How a small-town stadium usher in Iowa discovered the best left-handed pitcher in team history and alerted a Mets scout. How the Franchise, Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver, came to the team after Atlanta signed him out of season, and the Mets -- one of only three teams willing to match the Braves' offer -- saw then-commissioner William Eckert pick their name out of a hat.
Others tales are of the fans and behind-the-scenes people -- the batboys and school boys who skipped school, the statistician and travel managers who kept the records and got the team where they were going, and the Broadway stars who sang and the New York mayor who won an upset re-election because of the team's success.
But perhaps the best are the backstories of the four African Americans on the team, who grow up in the Jim Crow era in the deep south, and lived to tell about it. Take Donn Clendenon, for example, who entered Morehouse College and was assigned Martin Luther King Jr. as his mentor. The pair struck up a lifelong friendship, and when King was assassinated in 1968, Clendenon was instrumental in persuading Major League baseball to postpone the beginning of its season for a few days while King's funeral took place.
Several of those stories are told in the latter pages of the book, which describe and narrate the games of the playoffs and World Series. Each game is given one or more chapters, and the details are exacting and told with the thrill of the mid-October classic. For Met fans of a certain age (that would include me) it's a trip down memory lane and a chance to re-live one of the best moments of the best time of your life.
"More than a anything, in the same summer that two men walked on the moon, 400,000 men and women descended on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, and millions more all over the county were embroiled in a conflict about the war in Vietnam, the Mets embodied hope," Coffey writes. "They embodied possibility -- a belief that things could get better and would get better."
He tells their story by rewinding the season and its most important games, interspersed with vignettes of the people involved. Some stories are well known to any Mets' fan: How a small-town stadium usher in Iowa discovered the best left-handed pitcher in team history and alerted a Mets scout. How the Franchise, Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver, came to the team after Atlanta signed him out of season, and the Mets -- one of only three teams willing to match the Braves' offer -- saw then-commissioner William Eckert pick their name out of a hat.
Others tales are of the fans and behind-the-scenes people -- the batboys and school boys who skipped school, the statistician and travel managers who kept the records and got the team where they were going, and the Broadway stars who sang and the New York mayor who won an upset re-election because of the team's success.
But perhaps the best are the backstories of the four African Americans on the team, who grow up in the Jim Crow era in the deep south, and lived to tell about it. Take Donn Clendenon, for example, who entered Morehouse College and was assigned Martin Luther King Jr. as his mentor. The pair struck up a lifelong friendship, and when King was assassinated in 1968, Clendenon was instrumental in persuading Major League baseball to postpone the beginning of its season for a few days while King's funeral took place.
Several of those stories are told in the latter pages of the book, which describe and narrate the games of the playoffs and World Series. Each game is given one or more chapters, and the details are exacting and told with the thrill of the mid-October classic. For Met fans of a certain age (that would include me) it's a trip down memory lane and a chance to re-live one of the best moments of the best time of your life.
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