* RK Review: 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

The Mets have had a relatively short history, not even 50 years yet, and much of their lore is based on failure rather than success. Except for a handful, the players for the first few years of the team’s existence were nothing to write home about.

So when authors like Matthew Silverman toss out names like Jerry Koosman, Ed Kranepool, Al Jackson, Steve Henderson…they might not mean much to baseball fans out of the NY area. But to those who faithfully follow the Mets, especially those who have been with the team since the beginning, they’re just as memorable as Seaver, Gooden, and Strawberry. Among the 100 things are players, dates, manager, front office people, trades…in short anything one would need know to be called a true fan.

With all the buzz about the final season of Yankee Stadium, there seems to be a lack of notoriety that Shea is also in its swan song. Granted, you can’t compare the two for tradition or sentiment, but this Queens abode was “home” for most of the Mets’ life. Silverman pays homage to the ballpark in his “to do” section. Go to Shea, he says, look at the game from various vantage points on each level chosen for optimum viewing pleasure. He also includes non-baseball events at Shea, such as the Jets championship in 1969 and the Beatles taking to the field 1965, followed by several other rock concerts since then.

Books like this are not meant to be great literature, and that is not meant as criticism. Rather the purpose seems to be to light a small flame of memory. Silverman mentions Ron Hunt and we see the scrappy little second baseman with a scowl on his face, posing for the yearbook picture. He reminds us of two playoff home runs from unlikely players that broke our hearts. All like a family album, but with fewer pictures. Other attempts have been made to capture this type of feeling, but none have succeeded like 100 Things. One can see a book like this for each team (although I think the novelty of the “die” theme has overstayed its welcome).

Silverman — whose other books about the Mets include Mets by the Numbers, Meet the Mets and Mets Essential — offers his own must-reads for Mets fans, modestly omitting his own works:

Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game, by Jimmy Breslin
The new York Mets, by Leonard Koppett
Screwball, by Tug McGraw
If at First, by Keith Hernandez
The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years of Baseball Magic, by Jack Lang and Mark Simon
The Complete Year-by-Year NY Mets Fan’s Almanac, by Duncan Bock and John Jordan
The Worst Team Money Could Buy, by Bob Klapisch and John Harper
The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman
The Ticket Out, by Michael Sokolove
Pedro, Carlos, and Omar, by Adam Rubin