Review of "Fabulous to Futile in Flushing"

 Having read several books on the New York Mets, I was interested in seeing if there was anything new in this book.  There was some information I learned about the team that I hadn't read before but it really felt more like a long summary instead of a true book on the history of the team.  Still a decent read.  Here is my review of this book by David Russell. 

Title/Author:

“Fabulous to Futile in Flushing: The Complete Concise History of the Mets” by David Russell

Tags:

Baseball, professional, history, Mets

Publish date:

August 20, 2020

Length:

358 pages

Rating:

3 of 5 stars (good)

Review:

The best way to describe this book by David Russell, a complete history of the New York Mets, is that it is the Cliff Notes version of the 58 year history of the team.  From their famous first year of futility in 1962 to Pete Alonso’s outstanding rookie season in 2019, there is something interesting to discuss about every season that the Mets have played baseball and Russell is sure to include it.

One noticeable aspect of the book was that the better the season for the Mets on the field, the longer the chapter was.  So of course, the reader will learn the most about the 1969 and 1986 Mets, including recaps of the league championship series and the World Series.  The same is true for 1973, 2000, and 2015 in which the Mets won the National League pennant as well as 1988 and 2006 in which the team were champions of the National League East Division.  While these were the chapters in which the most was written, that doesn’t mean that every other season doesn’t have good material, there is just less written about them.

For me, that was a disappointment because the colorful history of the Mets would lead one to believe that this book would cover some of those clubs as well as the better ones. No matter the record of the Mets, each chapter has a “fabulous” and a “futile” player, a recap of the season, some other interesting tidbits such as notable transactions, and at the end of each decade, a quiz that is challenging for even the biggest Mets fans. 

While 358 pages sounds like a lot, the book reads very quickly as even the championship years don’t take up a lot of pages.  It can be consumed easily in one sitting or a reader can take as long as he or she wants to absorb it because each year is covered in a nice compact manner.  The only downfall to this will be that fans who have followed the team closely will probably not learn much new information.  Readers who have also read other Mets books, especially books on their two championships, will also not learn much about those seasons that they didn’t read elsewhere.

Therefore, this book is recommended for readers who don’t know much about the Mets but are interested in learning more about the team that usually has to play second fiddle to the Yankees in its home city but nonetheless has a very colorful history that is fun to read about in this work.

I wish to thank Summer Game Books for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Format Read:

E-book (PDF)                                                                                                                                 

Buying Links:

https://www.summergamebooks.com/titles/non-fiction/fabulous-to-futile-in-flushing-the-complete-concise-history-of-the-mets-detail

https://www.amazon.com/Fabulous-Futile-Flushing-Year-Year-ebook/dp/B087JGH8KL/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=