Thank you McFarland for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Mr. Book just finished From First to Worst: The New York Mets, 1973-1977, by Jacob Kanarek.
The book starts with several chapters on the 1973 Mets. The book does a good job of showing how that really was a mediocre team. For almost the entire season, they were a last place team before getting hot at the end of the season and winning a bad division with only a 82-79 record. Then, the Mets took advantage of how anything can happen in a short series to upset a significantly better Reds team and almost do the same to the A’s in the World Series.
But, properly understood, while the Mets ensuing fall of the next few years was technically a fall from first place to last, it is really more of a case of a fall from mediocrity to awfulness.
One of my favorite hidden tidbits from the book was a story about umpire Ed Sudol. Sudol was behind the plate for a 23 inning game between the Mets and Giants—after working the first game of a doubleheader earlier that day. Then, he was again behind the plate for a 24 inning game between the Mets and Astros in 1968. And, in the Mets 25 inning game against the Cardinals in 1974, you guessed it … Sudol was behind the plate. He asked “Why does it always happen to me?”
There was a good discussion on the 1974 Mets season. It was similar to the 1973 season, in that the Mets were an awful team. The only difference is, instead of getting hot starting in August to barely finish above .500, instead the Mets never turned things around and instead finished 20 games under .500. While a drop from one game away from winning the World Series to 71-91 looks like a huge dropoff, dropping from 82-79 to 71-91 is far from unusual.
One of the great things about baseball and history books are all of the little tidbits that one can learn from them. One great example from this book was Jerry Koosman, and two other Mets minor leaguers, were involved in a car accident while Koosman was driving them to spring training in 1966. Koosman needed $75 to avoid going to jail (which, to the ex-lawyer in me, that immediately raises a red flag that there is a lot more to this story that anyone wants to publicly say) and Mets Joe McDonald advanced him the money. Koosman was then going to be released, since the Mets didn’t think he was a prospect, but McDonald vetoed the move since Koosman owed the team money.
The Mets rebounded to go 82-80 in 1975, but Yogi Berra lost his job as manager two-thirds of the way through. Then, 1976 started off strong, as the Mets started the season 18-9, which put them in first place. But, they were just a game over .500 the rest of the year. The Mets were already 13 ½ games back of the Phillies at the All-Star break and finished 16 games out of first.
That brings us to the Mets’ last place finish in 1977. The Mets lost 98 games, traded Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman on the same day and fired another manager. The two chapters on that season were among the strongest in the book, showing that the author was just as capable of writing about the bad times the team had as he was with the good times.
One does not have to be a Mets fan to enjoy this book. In fact, I am a life-long Yankees fan who is now in my 45th year of hating the Mets. However, as my grading of books shows, I am a non-partisan book reviewer and the GPA of Yankees books and there is not any big difference between the GPA of Yankees and Mets books that I have reviewed (neither is there with the Red Sox and the Dodgers’ GPA actually beats the Yankees’). I give this book an A, and I can assure you that would have had happened if I allowed my bias to govern my reading. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
This review has been posted at Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews
Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 8, 2024.
