A great social history of the Mets. If you loved "Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx is Burning", this will be for you. This is a thoughtful examination of the interplay between a team and its times. The interconnectedness between the urban history of New York City, the national concerns of the era, and immortal game are wondrously weaved together. This work shows why a team means so much more to a community than simple entertainment - it represents the soul of a place and it's people.

As a Mets fan and a lefty, I feel like this book was written just for me and maybe Mayor Mamdani. A fascinating look at labor history and how the Mets become the team of the underdogs. Even when they have winning seasons and extraordinarily rich players and owners, the Mets are still comrades. This book is obviously for a pretty niche audience, but that small group will find a lot to like.

I wasn't sure what to expect from a book that talks about the Mets through the lens of NYC and working/middle class.

What I got was a really interesting history of professional baseball with a lens on the history of the game in NYC. I never knew all of the history of the Metropolitans before the team gave way to the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees.

Learning the origin of the Dodgers' name was worth the time to read the book.

The biggest thing that stood out to me is how the Mets are the people's team. I always felt/feel that in NYC when the Mets are doing well, the city hits different.

Now I know why.

The Mets history is rooted in the middle class, the people. The Wilpons tried to change that, but eventually the Mets return to the people.

I am a Mets fan (I know, I’m a glutton for punishment), so take my review with that grain of salt. This is a great book! It’s approachable labor history, interwoven with baseball history generally and Mets history more specifically. I’m around the same age at the author, so I appreciated his personal ties to the team and the highs and lows he experienced at different stages of his own life - I too have vivid memories of being a Mets fan in a sea of Yankee fans in middle school during the 2000 Subway Series. However, I don’t think you need to be a Mets fan to appreciate this book. The tie-ins to social movements throughout the last 150 years seem natural (sometimes in books like this there is at least one relationship that seems a little forced!). Overall a well-written, entertaining book for any Mets fan, baseball fan, or just someone interested in the underdog stories of “the people’s insert-object-here”.

Metropolitans
A.M. Gittlitz

Advanced Reader Copy from Net Galley. Thanks, Astra House.

New York City. City of amazing baseball lore, magnificent wins, and tragic, heart wrenching losses. This book tells the story of baseball’s beginnings with the Metropolitans and Gothams of the 19th century, the emergence of the New York Giants, Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, on to the New York Yankees with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio, the Brooklyn Dodgers with Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson, and finally the re-emergence of the New York Mets with Tom Seaver, Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Mike Piazza, Francisco Lindor, and finally Juan Soto.

This story is captivating and from the beginning is fraught with peril. The ins and outs of ownership struggles, new and dying franchises, cross country moves, wealth and greed, unfair labor practices, racial tension and bigotry all amidst a backdrop of political tension, social uprising, even upheaval at times give a unique perspective to the development of America’s pastime.

Gittlitz does a great job of weaving the story of baseball into the story of America and the tumultuous 20th century. The world wars, the Great Depression, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the class and race struggles that defined much of the early 21st century in America all had direct impacts on Major League Baseball. This story is focused on the Mets, but the overarching themes give credence to the story of all major league franchises navigating the world and cities which they inhabit. The fan bases linking arms and loving their teams even though, in the end, it almost always ends in heartbreak.

This book is a well researched and thought provoking look at a city that loves its baseball. This city has found two distinct groups of fans to support their Yankees or their Mets. There is no in between and no love lost between the two franchises and fan bases. I learned a lot in this book and recommend it to New York baseball fans and really any baseball fans. It’s a unique blend of history, both social and political, and the baseball that took place along the way.

"From this communal vantage, the abstractions of statistics and standings are confronted by the reality of what we are really seeing--not a game between two opposing teams, but a common human struggle, within and against the economic, legalistic, and mechanical structure of the game itself, and its role as opiate for the physical and existential pain of wage labor."

Truly amazing read. A detailed history of the Mets, from a Marxist historical analysis perspective, written by a true fan of the orange and blue. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the origins of America's favorite pastime and the few highs and many lows of the New York Mets, as those peaks and valleys coincided with various class, civil rights, and labor struggles in American history. The Mets' perennial struggles reflect the near constant belittling of the working class in this country. Even now, the Mets maintain their status as "The People's Team" despite having the highest (or one of the highest) payrolls in the MLB. It was simultaneously heartening and disheartening to watch the players fight for their rights as laborers, only for capital (the MLB, the team owners, the government) to drive a wedge between them and the rest of the country's working people. Just a fascinating book overall. Loved it. A great message for baseball fans and everyone else working and living paycheck to paycheck alike. As Francisco Lindor said after the 2024 NLCS loss: "You have to build. You have to fight for each other. You have to create that bond and that trust. And like I said, fight for each other."

Netgalley and Astra Publishing House provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

“God isn’t dead, he’s playing for the Mets.”
I am so insanely impressed by this book I do not even know where to begin. Of course I was expecting to like it, but as of the writing of this review I can confidentially say it’s the best book i’ve read this year.
Somewhat underselling itself as just a history of the Mets, this work extends itself back to the founding of the United States to discuss the history of New York baseball and how baseball came to define America as it’s pastime. Gittlitz also doesn’t hold back on expressing his political and economic views, which made this even more enjoyable as a read since it was not bogged down by the author attempting to pacify their beliefs for a wide market. This obviously can be read and enjoyed by anyone anywhere, but is very clearly made by a Mets fan for other Mets fans.
It was also incredibly informative about the off field labor of the MLB (for example I had no idea the standard Major League ball was hand sewn in Costa Rican sweatshops), which I’m ashamed to say isn’t something that typically rests at the forefront of my mind when discussing the place of leftists and our politics in sports.
My only complaint (and it’s really quite small) is that I wish this book had talked more about the relationship between woman fans and the team. There’s a very vibrant community of women that love the Mets and I would’ve loved to see some of our stories on these pages.

Title/Author:
“Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle and the People’s Team” by A.M. Gittlitz

Rating:
4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review:
When the New York Mets started play in 1962, they were not the first New York baseball team to have the team nickname of “Metropolitans” (not the official name, but many will call them that) nor were they the first team that captured the hearts of many of those in the middle class over the “richer” teams like the Yankees. This book by A.M. Gittlitz captures that connection between those citizens and the baseball team.

The book’s strengths are Gittlitz’s research and the passion for which he writes about the subject, whether it is baseball and the Mets or about the working class and the struggles they have with the political landscape, among many other things. I felt the writing and description of the early Metropolitans and the battles that players had to either form a union or field competing baseball leagues to go up against the National League in the late 19th century was the best aspect of the book.

He also does an excellent job of showing how the Mets of the 1960’s, capping it off with their 1969 championship, resonated with people who may not have cared one bit about baseball but showed how those who have been down for so long can still be successful. He goes deep into that topic as well as the other Mets teams, especially the 2000 team that lost the World Series to the Yankees. They too had connections with the middle class according to Gittlitz.

Where the book was a bit of a downer while reading it was the addition of much political commentary. This isn’t to say that I am one who says politics and sports don’t mix – they indeed do. It isn’t also because I want to insert my own political opinions while reading or writing this review because it doesn’t matter – what matters is how Gittlitz writes about his views and they come across as strong, consistent and passionate. I was only surprised at how much of the book discussed political issues without talking at all about the baseball connection. Nearly every sports book about a particular team, player or era will at least give a few sentences to the social and political climate at the time – this one goes well beyond that. And to the author’s credit, he does a very good job of laying out his beliefs and why he feels that way.

Overall, while I was surprised at the level of detail and how well connected the author put the Mets with the working class, it was quite an interesting book to read and one that is recommended not only for Mets and baseball fans, but also for readers who wish to read about politics and class struggles as well.

I wish to thank Astra Publishing House for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

My Mets fandom is inextricably linked to my grandmother, who grew up in a working class immigrant family in Brooklyn. She was a very long-suffering fan and made her family Mets fans too, for better or (much more often) for worse. She and the Mets taught me about underdogs, about trying again, about savoring the sheer joy of a hard-fought win. Nothing exemplifies underdog to me the way the Mets do, and this book offers an in-depth, unique way in to Mets history. The author takes a fascinating look at how that underdog status and spirit are interwoven with politics, class, and economics. This book also combines the Mets with some of my favorite interests: fan studies and history, media analysis, niche New York City history. It takes a wide look, from the beginnings of baseball to the midcentury beginning of the Mets, from their very up and down years to their current state with Steve Cohen at the helm. It got a bit dense at times with politics and theory, but overall, this is a unique, deeply knowledgeable and researched look at both the Mets and NYC and sports culture. It’s long and ambitious, and I really appreciate Gittlitz for going in a special direction with this, differing from the typical sports book.

A must read for any New York Mets fan. But also a great read for just baseball or sports fans in general.
Even for the most diehard fan there will be new details and stories here. While I am very well acquainted with the bad boy Mets of the '80s, the the Mets of the '60s and '70s have always been broad brush strokes to me and Metropolitans adds a lot of interesting context to a story that I thought I knew, but clearly didn't.

an amazing mix of history, theory, and pop culture! not my usual reading material but as a mets fan i had to request this when i saw it and i do not regret it. will definitely be buying a hard copy to reread and loan to friends!