After the Miracle

January 1, 2019
A fond remembrance of a legendary baseball team and the teammates who kept in touch throughout the ensuing decades.On Oct. 16, 1969, the New York Mets defeated the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series. Playing in right field for those Mets was Shamsky (The Magnificent Seasons: How the Jets, Mets, and Knicks Made Sports History and Uplifted a City and the Country, 2016), who--along with sportswriter Sherman (Kings of Queens: Life Beyond Baseball with the '86 Mets, 2016, etc.)--offers a narrative of that season and later memories anchored by the teammates' 2016 trip to visit ailing pitching ace Tom Seaver. On paper, the 1969 Mets were average. Outfielder Cleon Jones finished third in the National League in batting average, yet no one on the team hit more than 26 home runs or drove in more than 76 runs. The team succeeded because of two main factors: the guiding hand of their manager, Gil Hodges ("Sixty-nine would never have happened if not for Gil Hodges," says Jones), and the fact that these Mets, in the words of first baseman and World Series MVP Donn Clendenon, "epitomized the word team." Thus Shamsky, who hit .300 that season, split time in right field with Ron Swoboda, who made a key catch in Game 4 of the World Series. Neither Clendenon nor Swoboda had played a single game in the National League Championship Series. The narrative of the season itself, which takes up two-thirds of the book, is informative and entertaining, and Shamsky effectively places the team's magical year within the social and political contexts of 1969, including the moon landing, the Vietnam War (shortstop Bud Harrelson missed time to fulfill his military obligation), and the now-all-but-forgotten rioting in York, Pennsylvania. Moreover, the author persuasively argues that the team helped unify New Yorkers during a turbulent time. However, the reunion itself is somewhat anticlimactic, and Shamsky probably overstates his case that the '69 Mets inspired the nation as a whole.An enjoyable tale of a storybook season.

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April 1, 2019

Since the New York Mets baseball club launched in 1962, they were famous for being the loveable losers, accustomed to receiving last place every single year until something extraordinary happened in 1969, when they went from being the worst team in baseball to World Series champions. This legendary team would come to be known as the "Miracle Mets." Having played for the Mets during that season, outfielder Shamsky (The Magnificent Seasons) delivers an account of that miraculous season in vivid detail. He also organized a gathering with some of the team members in 2017; with the likes of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and more. It's been 50 years since the New York Mets won the World Series, and this book brilliantly captures the spirit of that year as well as the momentous gathering. In Shamsky's telling, it was truly a season for the ages. VERDICT New York Mets fans and general baseball fans will greatly enjoy and appreciate this fantastic story.--Gus Palas, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2019
Art Shamsky was a right fielder on one of the most memorable sports teams of all time, the Miracle Mets of 1969. Several of those former Mets got together in 2017, and Shamsky reprises the gathering, which proved both joyfully nostalgic and deeply melancholy, thanks to the deaths of various teammates (Tommy Agee and Tug McGraw, among them) and the serious illnesses and memory loss of others (Bud Harrelson and Tom Seaver). Shamsky is a capable, if sometimes repetitive, writer, and, while the story of the Miracle Mets has been told before (including, in part, by Shamsky himself in The Magnificent Seasons, 2004), it bears telling again. Shamsky's account of the 1969 season is exceptional, as is his handling of the team's disparate personalities, the national context in which the Mets staged their Miracle (it was a year for miracles??the first manned moon landing took place less than three months before the World Series), and the coverage of the racial amity on the team. Put this one alongside David Halberstam's The Teammates (2003), about a visit of two former Red Sox to a dying Ted Williams.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)