{"product_id":"metropolitans-new-york-baseball-class-struggle-and-the-peoples-team","title":"Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Come the revolution, the team that represents us will be wearing, [Gittlitz] reassures the reader, the Mets colors: 'the hard-hat orange of the international working class, and our blue Earth.' ...He makes a much better case than one might have thought possible....We root, root, root for the home team, and if they do not win it is something worse than a shame. Meanwhile, we buy peanuts and Cracker Jacks at whatever price the concession stand can extract.\" \n\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--Adam Gopnik, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"For me, the Mets were a badge of crude contrarianism: Everyone else liked the Phillies, but I was a freethinker. In \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team\u003c\/i\u003e, A.M. Gittlitz offers a more ambitious ideological brief. The Mets, he argues, embody a 'populist character, ' with fans making the team a symbol of progressive hopes, and players marching in 'the vanguard of the labor struggles within baseball, and social justice struggles . . . outside it.' Metropolitans proves a less quixotic project than that might suggest . . . The book is far less dreary, too. Mr. Gittlitz writes with the lunatic panache of a utopian manifesto or 2000s sports blog.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Timothy Farrington, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\" \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e is consistently engaging and full of fresh detail.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Andrew Katzenstein, \u003ci\u003e New York Review of Books \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"It would be easy for me to say that \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e is at its best when it excavates the radical possibilities that ownership and nationalism repeatedly foreclosed; these flickering moments form a meticulous, frequently thrilling history of what baseball briefly was and could have been. But what moved me most was Gittlitz's own self-awareness about how precarious his project is . . . Throughout, he is betting that the desire for something better, even when it can't be satisfied, is worth naming and preserving.\" \n\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--Will Harrison, \u003ci\u003eThe Nation \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"An ambitious love letter to the New York Mets.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eSuzanne van Atten, \u003ci\u003eAtlanta Journal Constitution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Ambitious and intellectually invigorating, this will delight baseball devotees, surprise readers unfamiliar with the game's political history, and satisfy those more versed in leftist politics than box scores.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"Gittlitz's writing implies more than it says on paper. By placing all these bits of baseball lore in historical context, he gives the reader the feeling that it is all connected: The working-class struggle is the civil rights struggle, is the anti-war struggle, is the labor struggle, is the Mets struggle.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Kevin Christopher Robles, \u003ci\u003eAmerica Magazine: The Jesuit Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\" \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e expertly unpacks the 'cruel optimism' linking the yearning of a fanbase whose suffering is alleviated by sporadic miracles to the genuine dissident legacies that surrounded the team's creation and which have occasionally, miraculously, come back to life. How appropriate that I write these words while watching the Mets being no-hit through eight innings--precisely the situation of the U.S. left at this moment. How will our heroes survive? Stay tuned!\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eJonathan Lethem, author of \u003ci\u003eMotherless Brooklyn \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Fortress of Solitude \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Shea belongs to the people! \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans \u003c\/i\u003eunpacks the singular and wondrous history of Mets baseball. From Tom Seaver's bold stand on Vietnam to the big-dollar glitz of the Piazza years, A.M. Gittlitz has assembled a true people's history of New York City's most special franchise.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eNoah Kulwin, co-host of \u003ci\u003eBlowback \u003c\/i\u003epodcast\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\" \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e is a gem, an ode to the countercultural working-class punk side of baseball that gets ignored by corporate ownership and media. Its vehicle: the singularly star-crossed New York Mets, and this is a rich, roaring, necessary text for Mets fans, but it also deserves to be widely read as a socio-political history of America in the last 60-some years. \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e reminds us that beneath its stifling monopolistic business practices, Major League Baseball is a complex civic institution populated by wise-ass humans yearning for good baseball, cheap beer, and a living wage.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eJohn W. Miller, author of \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"If Howard Zinn himself had written a people's history of 20th century baseball in New York City and the rise of the Amazin' Mets, he would've been hard-pressed to approach what A.M. Gittlitz has accomplished in \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e. Filled with captivating detail and historical insight, Gittlitz's work is a singular account of a period in America when pro sports, mass culture and urban politics collided and became inextricably linked forever.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eDevin Gordon, author of \u003ci\u003eSo Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin' True Story of the New York Mets―the Best Worst Team in Sports\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"The book is unlike any other Mets-related book we've seen; Gittlitz has gone deep into not just Mets history, but the societal context of the team's founding, its early years, and all the subsequent eras of the team's existence. It is a book that's not just for baseball fans, but for anyone with an interest in late 20th century New York or American sports culture.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003eBrian Salvatore, \u003ci\u003eAmazin' Avenue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"[ \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e comprises] staggering amounts of backstory, dozens of details that have been lost to time until now, and a blend of perspective and context that feels as relevant in 2025 as it would have in 1969.\" \n\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eGreg Prince, \u003ci\u003eFaith and Fear in Flushing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA.M. Gittlitz is an organizer and writer focusing on counterculture and radical politics. He is the author of \n\u003ci\u003eI Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism\u003c\/i\u003e and co-host of the podcast This Wreckage. He lives in Ridgewood, Queens, but can be often found Tuesday nights at the Vegan City food stand at Citi Field.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Gittlitz really means it. Come the revolution, the team that represents us will be wearing, he reassures the reader, the Mets colors: 'the hard-hat orange of the international working class, and our blue Earth.' [...] He makes a much better case than one might have thought possible.\" \n\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--Adam Gopnik, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City, \u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e traces the electric and calamitous history of the New York Mets.\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitan\u003c\/i\u003es is for Mets fans, New York partisans, and everyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball itself: a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players--like the spectators--look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers. Along the way, A.M. Gittlitz re-introduces us to an eccentric cast of Metsian characters: Joan Payson, the first woman to buy a Major League Baseball team; a young Tom Seaver with an interest in progressive politics; and the contentious but beloved Mike Piazza. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGittlitz leads us through baseball's amateur beginnings to the Mets' first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements that many Mets players participated in. He guides us to the bad boy years, the exploitative development of farm academies in developing nations, and their inglorious purchase by a new breed of capitalist-- \n\u003ci\u003eeven after which they remained lovable losers\u003c\/i\u003e. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e brilliantly shows us that sports have long been a site of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. From purportedly calming riots in '69 to producing some of the greatest chokes in sporting history, from integration to desperate labor struggle against franchise owners, \n\u003ci\u003eMetropolitans\u003c\/i\u003e makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets--and why they are not just the team of the counterculture, the freaks, and the losers, but the beloved team of anyone with a beating heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eBooklist\u003c\/span\u003e 01\/01\/2026 (EAN 9781662603006, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/span\u003e 01\/26\/2026 (EAN 9781662603006, Hardcover) - *Starred Review\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e 01\/01\/2026 (EAN 9781662603006, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Astra House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496145912086,"sku":"9781662603006","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9781662603006.jpg?v=1783053948","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/metropolitans-new-york-baseball-class-struggle-and-the-peoples-team","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}