From the moon landing to Woodstock to the Stonewall riots, revolutionary change was in the air during the summer of 1969. That extended to sports as well. These were heady months when laughingstocks like the New York Mets, a team which had never finished higher than ninth in baseball's National League, suddenly were storming into the World Series. Just in time for the 50th anniversary, a trio of books on the Mets' miraculous 1969 championship season have hit the shelves, alongside the usual assortment of baseball tomes that sprout forth every spring.
The most comprehensive volume on the so-called Miracle Mets is Wayne Coffey's "They Said It Couldn't Be Done: The '69 Mets, New York City, and the Most Astounding Season in Baseball History" (Crown Archetype, 304 pp., $28). This is at once a primer and a deep dive, stuffed with so much detail that the narrative occasionally bogs down. Even ardent Mets fans will come across new nuggets of information in the 140 pages Coffey dedicates to the World Series. Along the way, Coffey sketches indelible portraits of the men who made up the roster, especially the team's quartet of African-American players _ Ed Charles, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee and Donn Clendenon _ who battled prejudice and injustice in their journeys from the Jim Crow South to the Big Apple.
Perhaps the most memorable image from the 1969 World Series is right fielder Ron Swoboda splayed on his side following his diving catch in the fourth game. Swoboda's memoir, fittingly titled "Here's the Catch: A Memoir of the Miracle Mets and More" (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's, 240 pp., $27.99, out June 11), centers on his career-defining snag, but it's more than that. At its core, the book is a quirky, gruff, intermittently lyrical exploration of the precarious life of a marginal major leaguer _ one who quotes Victorian poetry in one sentence, then likens his on-field performance to whale dung in the next.
