One expects Gittlitz, a journalist and an Occupy Wall Street veteran who writes from a hard-left, Marxist perspective, to dissuade his readers from rooting for something as obviously and cynically commercial as a sports franchise ... Not a bit of it. An all-consumed, obsessive Mets fan, Gittlitz truly believes that the Mets are the people’s team and that they have been engaged in genuine, if often contorted, class struggle on our behalf for the past sixty-five years or so ... So strenuously idealizing is the book that it is hard to read without imposing irony upon it, but the irony is ours. Gittlitz really means it ... Gittlitz runs through the history of the Mets...and reminds the reader of all the moments when the Mets at least seemed to stand for what was once called the counterculture. He makes a much better case than one might have thought possible ... To hit home his points, Gittlitz connects what happens on the field with all that happens off it. His cultural history can be a bit out of focus ... Gittlitz’s book is long, loving, and pained. A Marxist in love with the Mets occupies a difficult position. By the end, the requisite contortions lead him to a fate almost worse than capitalism: he must confront the thesis, offered by Jacobin’s founding editor, Bhaskar Sunkara, that it’s the Yankees who represent 'an authentic working class' ... Yet Gittlitz’s book, despite its occasional absurdities, arrives at a propitious moment.
Gittlitz details the team’s mostly tortured history of losses...while revealing, almost by accident, that more often than not, they’ve succeeded when they’ve reverted to being the 'people’s team' they’ve always been.
Bold, immersive ... Gittlitz’s research is comprehensive and his case well argued, and though the prose can be dense and allusive, its lyricism reinforces the book’s view of baseball as a cultural language as much as a sport. 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.
Gittlitz’s unconventional celebration of the New York Mets is knowledgeable and politically sophisticated, though it staggers as it heads for home. The millennial author begins rather loftily ... A smart, sprawling history of a team that became a magnet for anti-elitist fans.
