A Magic Summer

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock, but this book I never knew about just hit Clark Kent’s desk.  Looks cool and looks like it’s been around 40 years.    “A Magic Summer”   Who knew?
 

They were the “Miracle Mets,” winning a championship after a short ignominious history of catastrophic los-ing seasons. Here is the story of that most famous New York Mets season, 1969. Author Stanley Cohen inter-viewed key members of that championship team—Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Jerry Koosman, Tommie Agee, Bud Harrelson, Tug McGraw, and others—providing fascinat-ing updates and insights. Complete with a new intro-duction by the author and photographs not included in previous editions, this 40th Anniversary Edition is a unique celebration of a season that Mets fans will never forget.

 

http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/details.php?TitleID=290

 

Wallace Matthews on the Yankees providing cover for the Mets

Hit Springsteen last night so I’m tired, behind on real job, and being a blog slacker.
 
 
And the most interesting thing this morning in Flushing seems to be Wallace Matthews correctly observing that the Yankees give the Mets could cover for the stupid things they do.
 
In the words of Wallace:
 
In a world without Yankees, the Mets would have a whole lot more to answer for.

In a town that prides itself on giving no free rides, the Mets have enjoyed a lifetime Metro card into blissful anonymity for most of their 47-year history.

They build an $800-million ballpark (Troubled Assets Relief Program Field) financed in large part by government subsidies and taxpayer bailout money, and nobody gives a damn because the Yankees did the same thing, only on a bigger scale, in the Bronx.

The Mets raise their highest ticket prices to nearly $300 a seat, which in most locales would be a scandal and an obscenity, and compared to the Yankees, they look like a discount store.

The Mets spend more on ballplayers than all but one other team in Major League Baseball. But because that one team is the Yankees, who outspend their nearest competitor by the value of the entire Colorado Rockies roster, nobody cares.

And when, with that $140-million roster, the 2008 Mets execute the second of two of the most disheartening back-to-back collapses in baseball history, they somehow fly under the supposedly sensitive New York radar.

Why?

Because in 2008, the Yankees failed to make the playoffs, too.

 
He’s absolutely right.  I hope to dive in more on this later today when I have time.   In the meantime, check out the piece:  http://www.newsday.com/sports/ny-spwally246081481mar24,0,6566088.column
 
Reminder: Yankee tix on sale at 10am.  No special pre-sale, this is general public.