By Charlie Hangley
Your intrepid columnist is reading a wildly entertaining book at the moment, with the unlikely title So Many Ways to Lose. It’s a perverse history of the New York Mets, as told by a diehard fan, Devin Gordon, a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and ESPN the Magazine, among others. Mr. Gordon was a wide-eyed ten-year-old when a stray ground ball rolled between Bill Buckner’s beleaguered ankles late on a chilly October night in 1986, and his love for the same team we love comes through loud and clear. But as you might tell by the title, this is no fanboy exercise. The book sheds new light on the image of Gil Hodges, the repeated embarrassments foisted on Cleon Jones, and the too-late redemption of Mackey Sasser –that’s all I’ve gotten to so far. I can’t wait to see how he skewers the 2007-2008 seasons, the Mickey Callaway era or the Pizza Rat/Opossum incident. But I digress.
In the book, he describes four distinct “Ice Ages” in the franchise’s history. The first, most obvious one – “the fun one,” he calls it — is the Marvelous Marv/Polo Grounds period. The next, also self-evident was the one following the Midnight Massacre, when Tom Seaver was taken away, only thawed out with the arrival of Davey Johnson, Dwight Gooden and the rest of the rollicking roisterers that shaped the Golden Age. The third was in the aftermath of the fall of that loud and proud bunch, the epoch of “The Worst Team Money Can Buy.”
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"So Many Ways to Lose" is available on Amazon. In case you need a Christmas gift idea.
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