Mets bookshelf 2011-2013

Seems like there were a lot of books that came out, or are about to come out, surrounding the 50^th anniversary of the franchise.  So, I’d figure it’d be nice to spotlight them.

So, off to trusty Amazon.com we go, and do leave comments if books that didn’t make Amazon that were published in 2011 and 2012 or too be published this year.  Especially self-published e-books that do not have Kindle versions.  And we search “mets” in Books…Sports and Outdoors…sort by publication date…(I really need a podcast)…go to 2011 as that when some of the 50^th Anniversary stuff started to crank out…ah, here we go

We start with Mets Journal: Year By Year and Day By Day With The New York Mets Since 1962 that came out on March 1^st, 2011.

This is not a bad resource, compiled by John Snyder.  Good facts and game recaps.  A good, if not long awaited follow up to Dennis D’Agostino’s This Date In Mets History from 1982.

March 16^th saw the release of Matthew Silverman’s New York Mets: 50 Amazin’ Seasons which is a nice coffee table effort with tons of photos and memorabilia from all the years.

The Mets’ entrant in the 162-0: Imagine A Perfect Season came out on the 23rd, written by Howie Karpin, and spotlights the biggest 162 wins in franchise history.

Jeff Pearlman’s excellent The Bad Guys Won on the 1986 champs got a paperback release on August 30^th.

The Daily News was the first of the newspapers to put their 50^th Anniversary retrospective together on September 1^st with The Mets: A 50^th Anniversary Celebration.

On October 1^st, the Mets entrant into the Triviology sports teams trivia books was released.

November 11^th saw the release of the Post’s retrospective, The Amazins: Celebrating 50 Years of Mets History.

Matthew Silverman kicked 2012 off with his Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York’s Most Agonizingly Amazin’ Team which was released on January 16^th.  Fine book, looking at all the best players, moments and more of the past 50 years of Mets baseball.

The iconic Can Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin got a 50^th Anniversary re-release on February 14^th.

Another trivia compilation, Metsology Trivia Challenge was released on February 18^th.

The Tales From The Team series saw a couple of Met entrants, the first being the second edition for Tales From The New York Mets Dugout: A Collection Of The Greatest Mets Stories Ever Told compiled by Bruce Markusen that came out on March 14^th.

March 29^th would see the release of R.A. Dickey’s bestselling memoirs, Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest For Truth, Authenticity and The Perfect Knuckleball.

The other Tales From The Team entry, just in time for the 50^th Anniversary, was Tales From The 1962 New York Mets Dugout: A Collection of The Greatest Stories from The Mets Inaugural Season which came out on April 1^st and was co-compiled by Janet Paskin and Greg Prince.

Bud Harrelson would come out with his own book, co-authored by Phil Pepe, Turning Two: My Journey To The Top Of The World And Back With The New York Mets which came out on April 10^th.

On May 15^th a 24 page independently published paperback hit Amazon.com titled 28 Days Later: The First Seven Series For The 2012 New York Mets by Sean P. Kenny.

July 10^th saw the release of a tome that Amazon doesn’t have the product image of.  It’s the first volume of Meeting The Mets: A Quirky History of a Quirky Team by a Ph.D. Thomas A. Droleskey.  It appears to cover 1962-1986 with more volumes to come.

July 31^st saw the release of a Met joke book.  No, nothing like that, this appears to be some of the usual Borsch Belt, Henny Youngman type of one-liners called The Best Ever Book Of Mets Jokes: Lots and Lots of Jokes Specially Repurposed for You-Know-Who by an Australian humorist named Mark Geoffrey Young.

New York Versus New York, 1962: The Birth of the Yankees-Mets Rivalry by Bill Morales came out on August 29^th.

Keith Hernandez’ and Matt Silverman’s Shea Good-Bye: The Untold Story of The Historic 2008 Season was re-released on September 1^st.

David Ferry’s Total Mets: The Definitive Encyclopedia of the New York Mets’ First Half-Century, a fine addition to the Met reference library, was released on October 5^th.

Greg Prince followed up his Faith and Fear In Flushing with the first part of his four part look at the 500 greatest wins in team history with The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973): 50 Years of The New York Mets As Told In 500 Amazin’ Wins (Volume 1).

A look at the 1986 Mets and Red Sox, Season of Ghosts: The ’86 Mets and The Red Sox by Howard Burman was released on December 31^st.

Now onto the coming soon section:

Mike Piazza’s eagerly anticipated memoirs, Long Shot, co-written by Lonnie Wheeler, is due out on February 12^th.

Long time New York Times’ columnist Ira Berkow shares Met related memories in Summers At Shea: Tom Seaver Loses His Overcoat and Other Met Stories on March 1^st.

Howie Rose steps up to the writer’s plate with Put It In The Book!: A Half Century Of Mets Mania which gets put on the book shelves, also on March 1^st.

Wherever I Wind Up will get a paperback release on March 26^th.

April 2^nd sees Matthew Silverman looking at 1973, it appears not just the Mets, with Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season as well as Nailed!: The Improbable Rise and Spectacular Fall of Lenny Dykstra by Christopher Franke.

While history will remember him more as a Phillie or Cub, but he does count as a former Met player and manager, Dallas Green comes out with his memoirs The Mouth That Roared: My Six Outspoken Decades in Baseball on May 1^st.

The third edition of Peter C. Bjarkman’s The New York Mets Encyclopedia is due out on June 1^st.

Dwight Gooden takes his latest turn at being an author with Doc: A Memoir with Ellis Henican on June 4^th.

And the last Met related book listed is the Tom Clavin and Danny Peary Gil Hodges bio getting a paperback re-release on August 6^th.

Now, to e-reader exclusives!  Well, at least the ones here on Amazon…

The Lost Save of Tug McGraw, a short tale by Steven Scott Nestle about meeting Tug McGraw.  It was released on February 7^th, 2012.

March 21^st of 2012 saw the release of The New York Mets And The Meaning of Life, a look at Met history by Alexander J. Basile.

And finally, R.A. Dickey got the quickie and cheap bio treatment in Joseph Bottum’s The Summer of 43: R.A. Dickey’s Knuckleball and The Redemption of The Game which was curiously released just at the start of the summer, July 4^th, 2012.