Yells For Ourselves focuses on the 99/00 Mets team.  I was vaguely a Mets fan at this time - I remember them making it to the World Series but was in no way as invested with the team as I would be 5 or 6 years after this.  This book was originally a blog that got made into a book (that's the dream, isn't it?) and begin with Bobby V and goes through some of the team changes and highlights during this time.  I thought it was a very good retelling of the era - and really enjoyed going back to this time in Mets history!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.

Yells For Ourselves recounts the 1999 and 2000 seasons of the New York Mets. The Mets have always been considered second best to the New York Yankees. Everyone considers the Yankees as New York’s team and though the Mets have had glimpses of greatness with ’69, '73 and '86…in the eyes of most New Yorkers they haven’t proven that they have earned the title of New York’s team. The 1999 and 2000 seasons change that and though it isn’t perfect and though they unfortunately don’t beat the Yankees in the 2000 World Series…they earn some respect and kinda prove themselves.

Though I am a Mets fan since birth…I’m more of a casual Mets fan and was too young to remember this time of Mets history but I still enjoyed the book. The whole book is basically a play by play of the entire 1999 and 2000 seasons. So this book is perfect if you want to relive it or if you want to learn more about that season. It’s a lot of information and my only complaint is at time it felt like at times it was a lot to take in. That’s were I think a hardcore Met’s fan would enjoy it more. Honestly other then that it was a great read and you can really tell the author knows what he’s talking about!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ebook!

*I received an ebook in exchange for an honest review*

Sports stories — and especially baseball stories — are written at certain altitudes, as it were. Some are written from 30,000 feet, taking a wide overview of what’s happening across a broad span of time. Some cruise along at a lower altitude, focusing on a particular team or player but still encompassing a number of years, or vice versa. And still others, like <em>Yells for Ourselves: A Story of New York City and the New York Mets at the Dawn of the Millennium</em> (2019, Quill) do their best work at ground level, up close and personal with a particular team at a very specific point in time.

In the case of Matthew Callan’s historical recounting, the team is the New York Mets and the time is 1999 and 2000. Callan writes with the enthusiasm of a fan but the skill of a journalist. His primary source appears to be his personal observation of the seasons in question, and his only secondary sources are quotes from contemporary news accounts. As such, the book is somewhat lacking in the kind of historical grounding that I think Callan intended, that could only be achieved by revisiting the key figures in the story to get their perspective from today. He does do a good job of placing the team within the context of New York City’s history and its battle for the city’s affections with the New York Yankees, perhaps the most famous sports franchise in any sport. As Callan tells it, the Mets ascended in attention and affection when New York was going through tough times in the 1970s and 1980s, battling high crime and bad press. In those days, the Mets were symbolic of the scrappy blue-collar underdog identity to which the city’s residents related most strongly. As the city righted itself in the 1990s (albeit under somewhat questionable law enforcement policies) its identity tilted more toward Wall Street and the Yankees, with their illustrious history of world championships and timelessly "classic" look, once again leaving the Mets on the outside looking in.

Even more than those analogies between baseball and economics, however, <em>Yells for Ourselves</em> is primarily a nearly day-by-day accounting of two seasons of the New York Mets, with all the ups and downs that devout followers find so agonizing. The sheer detail might be overwhelming to any but the most avid Mets fans. More general baseball enthusiasts should find the reminders of familiar players and events a pleasant trip down memory lane, along with a glimpse behind the curtain of events they only viewed from afar. Casual fans and those who do not follow baseball at all may well find themselves turning instead to something a bit less meticulously detailed.

For all that <em>Yells for Ourselves</em> seems to be a labor of love by a lifelong Mets fan, the writing is professional and far from a slog. It is well written and edited, and does not suffer from a confusion of timeline or purpose. In that Callan has more than done his favorite team justice, even as he despairs at their foibles.

It was around this time that I got into baseball, and a fan of the Mets so it was enjoyable to go back and read more indepth coverage about that era than what I paid attention to at the time.

For most of their history, the New York Mets have been playing the part of second fiddle to New York City’s other baseball team, the New York Yankees. At the start of 1999, as a new millennium was about to begin, this was still the case, especially since the Yankees had just come off one of the most successful seasons in baseball history and won their second World Series title in three years. The Mets, meanwhile, were also starting to make waves and capture the attention of New York baseball fans and media. The Mets’ adventures in 1999, as well as 2000 when they got to face the Yankees in the Subway Series. This book, mainly a collection of writings by the author, Matthew Callen, from blog posts is a very good account of those two seasons.

The most impressive aspect of this book is the minute detail in which Callen writes about the Mets for those two seasons. Not only does he capture the highlights of the best of the team those years, he writes about the agony of some of the losses, all of the controversy and all of the front office maneuvers. While many of the more controversial statements and actions involve manager Bobby Valentine, there isn’t a person involved with the Mets those two seasons that escapes being noticed by Callen.

While the detail of so many games and so many press conferences with the New York media can get tedious to read (at least if the reader is not a serious Met fan), it gets very entertaining without Callen needing to insert his own brand of humor or opinions. There is very little that the reader will learn about Callen’s views because he lets the players, manager, general manager and reporters tell the story themselves and he simply reports it. That proved to be a winning formula for this book.

Every great Mets memory from those two seasons is captured here – the thrilling come-from-behind victory at Shea in the 1999 series against the Yankees, the tie-breaking game against Cincinnati to give the Mets the wild card spot in that same season. Then in those playoffs, the epic National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves is covered in its full glory. The Braves winning the first three games fairly easily, then the Mets storming back in games 4 and 5, capped off in that latter game by Robin Ventura’s “Grand Slam Single”, and finally the heartbreak of the loss to the Braves in game 6.

Then when the new millennium starts, Callen writes about 2000 with just as much gusto as 1999, although this time, he adds some Yankees text as well since the two teams met in the World Series to give the World Series a complete New York flavor for the first time in 44 years. This is also where the book finally gives a more thorough picture to the reader of the pulse of New York City and how they feel about their baseball teams and the Subway Series. This aspect of that time is what drew me to the book and while this was very good, it left me slightly disappointed that there wasn’t more of this material written throughout the book. Keeping in mind that this was most a collection of blog posts that were weaved together to make the book, I felt the author did a very good job of putting them together in a fluid story instead of simply throwing them together because they spoke on a similar topic – the Mets.

Die-hard Mets fans will really enjoy this book, and fans of other teams, even the Yankees, would be wise to take a look at this as well for a complete picture of the Mets for those two seasons when New York truly did capture the lions’ share of attention from the baseball media.

I wish to thank Quill for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a must read for any Mets fan! My husband and I both loved this book, as it was interesting to read about the environment in New York during the 1999 and 2000 seasons. Highly recommend!

A real out-of-nowhere great read. As a lifetime Yankee fan whose prime fandom was the Torre years, it was genuinely fascinating to hear such familiar history told from the other side's perspective. Any baseball fan would love this though. I've been a lapsed sports fan for close to a decade, and this book for whatever reason really made me interested in at least trying to follow baseball again.