Get Your Tokens Ready
The Late 1990s Road to the Subway Series
by Chris Donnelly
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Pub Date May 01 2025 | Archive Date Apr 30 2025
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Description
The 1996 season ended with the Yankees winning their first World Series championship in eighteen years and receiving a grand parade through the streets of the city. The Mets exited the season still struggling to maintain managers and quality players and battling controversy in the clubhouse and off-field.
By 2000, the Yankees, amid baseball’s first dynasty in a generation, appeared the undisputed kings of New York with three World Series titles in four seasons. The Mets, however, after years of irrelevance, had rebuilt their team not only to be competitive but to create one dramatic moment after another. Adding to the story were several people who had played or managed for both teams during their careers, most notably Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, and Joe Torre. The result was a golden age of baseball for the city, culminating at long last in the two teams finally battling for New York’s baseball soul in the new millennium during the 2000 World Series.
Detailing the moments you remember and some you may have forgotten—from fake mustaches to all-out melees, from wild pitch endings to thrown bat insanity, from heartache to celebration—Get Your Tokens Ready covers it all.
Advance Praise
“Many of us of a certain age believed we’d never see a Subway Series as our fathers and grandfathers had, and then, amazingly, we did. In the final piece of Chris Donnelly’s lyrical trilogy detailing New York’s late-century baseball renaissance, he brings us back to those wonderful years when the dream became, first, possible and, ultimately, real. In his hands Get Your Tokens Ready is a masterful story told by a master storyteller.”—Mike Vaccaro, sports columnist for the New York Post and author of 1941—The Greatest Year in Sports
“When George Steinbrenner, sports talk radio, and the back pages were king, baseball was at its best. Chris Donnelly masterfully transports us back to one of the wildest rides in the sport’s history, when the Mets and Yankees shaped a generation of fans at the center of the baseball universe.”—Evan Drellich, senior writer for The Athletic and author of Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781496230805 |
| PRICE | $34.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 344 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Caroline G, Reviewer
The late 90s are my earliest memories of watching Major League Baseball. As a native New Yorker and life long Yankees fan, The subway series was a huge part of my formative years. “Get Your Tokens Ready” does a fantastic job of transporting you right back to the time period. The descriptions of the games and players are so detailed and informative that it brought me right back to those moments leading up to the infamous subway series. I thoroughly enjoyed this retrospective and I’d recommend to long time fans who want to relive history and new fans who are in for a treat. This book a must for lovers of history and baseball.
Reviewer 1170878
A nostalgic look back at a brief, highly entertaining slice of new york baseball. The book was laid out and told in a fascinating way that kept the material fresh - snippets of the first ever interleague matchup between the Mets and Yankees interspersed between the larger narrative of the 1997-2000 seasons covering each team culminating in the world series. I was only a youngster during the time period of this book but vividly remember much of the more media covered things - bobby valentine emerging in the dugout under disguise after an ejection, the yips of chuck knoblauch, rise of Piazza, tense battles between the Mets and my Atlanta Braves and of course the world series meeting of new york squads. I enjoyed having the author take a deeper dive into this brief but memorable era in baseball history. Thank you to the author, publisher and netgalley for the advance copy.
