Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? – by Jimmy Breslin

This book wasn’t really what I was expecting, yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was expecting a detailed retrospective of the 1962 New York Mets baseball season. For those who may not follow the game closely, the 1962 New York Mets are widely regarded as the worst team to ever play the game of baseball.  This book does highlight a lot of the misfortunes of this uncomfortable year, but it’s more of a thesis as to why and how this team came into existence, and more importantly why this team was so loved when they played so horribly.

Again, for those who aren’t diehards of the game, a bit of history is first warranted. The New York Mets were one of the first “expansion” teams in Major League baseball. This was a team whose star pitcher of that year (Roger Craig) had a won-loss record of 10-24.  If you really think about it, you have to be a pretty good pitcher to lose 24 ball games in one season. Since expansion teams are new, they have no farm system of good prospects, and they’re basically forced to start with rejects from other existing teams.  So expansion teams (in ANY sport) are never expected to do well for the first few seasons. In fact, the short-term goal of said team is to maybe come in second-to-last place instead of last place. So expectations are never high. Somehow, though, this team still managed to fall way short of such low expectations.

The city of New York (including neighboring Brooklyn) actually had a total of 3 teams through the first 50 years of organized baseball.  2 of those teams deserted the boroughs in the 1950s for California and left many of the baseball faithful in the Big Apple somewhat destitute.  The new expansion Mets would now be the “2^nd” New York team to compliment the steadfast Yankees over in the Bronx.  As soon as they started the season, they were awful and only got worse.  Ironically, the awfulness of this team became the charm of rooting for them.  So in addition to detailing aspects of this miserable first season, the author spends quite a bit of time pontificating as to why this phenomenon actually occurred.

The author alleges that people generally hate winners and love losers because, well, most of us lose an awful lot more than we win in the game of life. So watching a team like the 1962 Mets flounder, actually touches us in a fond, unique way.  To be fair, though, this isn’t one of those deep psychological books that explores this in any amount of detail.  It’s actually too short for that. The entire book is something like 160 pages.  So don’t be dismayed if you’re wanting a “sports” book and you end up getting a “psychology” book.

Still, some of the off the field anecdotes are quite hilarious.  Like the story of a midtown bartender who has a young son that he MAKES watch the New York Mets.  The reason? He wants his son to understand that life can be tough and unforgiving.  As his son gets older and learns about The Great Depression, he’ll be able to understand it a lot better after watching the Mets play baseball.

The on-the-field stories though are the best.  As mentioned, there aren’t that many as one might expect, but when the author does detail some highlights of some of the games, you can’t help but wail out loud in laughter at so many of the misfortunes.  The author definitely has a gift for recounting these events.  His style of storytelling is rather dry and wry, but this only adds fuel to the fire of reading about this travesty of a club.  You really feel as though you’re actually in the stands watching the house of cards collapse as author Jimmy Breslin recounts some of the highlights. “Highlights” is actually a poor choice of words, but never mind. 

An interesting factoid about this book is that it was written just after the disastrous freshmen season.  This isn’t a book written, say, 20 years after the fact where the author is reminiscing about such a memorable time.  For me, this actually adds to the charm.  It’s always fun to look back on a time period that was particularly peculiar and smile about it, but to have such a positive attitude when you’re right in the middle of such a fiasco really shows that you just might have the type of character that can prevail through the worst.

It’s a bit funny to hear the author moan about the present time (1963) being so commercialized and too “modern” for his tastes.  Things such as the (GASP!) television have brought the national pastime to a new low, he states.  This is quite laughable 60 years later. You have to wonder what the author would have felt about indoor baseball, free agency, ESPN, and multi-million-dollar per year utility infielders among other things.

So a book like this really is probably only for the fan of the game. Since it’s well under 200 pages, one won’t feel like it wasted too much of their time if they come away with their expectations not being met.  The fact that it was written so long ago added to its appeal for my tastes.  It’s fun to see how things have changed, yet to see the character of people stay mostly the same.  

You’ll laugh a lot as well.