Worst Team Money Can Buy (split from Reading Now)

[Guest Triple Dee]

Can somebody please tell me whether they think The Worst Team Money Can Buy is a worthwhile read.

[Willets Point]

="Triple Dee"]Can somebody please tell me whether they think The Worst Team Money Can Buy is a worthwhile read.

It's good toilet reading for a few laughs.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I read it back when it was published in 1993. It didn't tell me anything I didn't know, and spent, if I recall, a lot of time looking back to the winning teams of the 1980's.

Reading it now would be a different experience from reading it then. Perhaps it would be more interesting with 15 more years of perspective. In any event, it's light and breezy; you can probably polish it off in a few days. But if you never read it, your life won't be lacking anything.

[Guest Triple Dee]

Thank you for both your comments. I am only drawn to this book because I am (apparently) one of the few Mets fans who actually liked Bonilla.

[Frayed Knot]

My problem with WTMCB wasn't that it said "bad stuff 'bout the Mets' but that it contained too much author whining about how tough their job was.
- Strawberry left and we had nothing to write about ... WAhhhhhhh!
- they weren't nice to us in the locker room ... WAhhhhh!
- you think this job's easy, try doing 'X' ... WAhhhhh!

If I wanted to read a story on Klapisch and Harper I'd wait for their autobiographies.
The subtitle should have been; 'The '93 Mets and how they affected US

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I found it an interesting chronicle of the time -- better now than then. The funny thing is, with perspective we know that other teams cost more and were worse.

[Guest AG/DC]

My problem is that Klapisch presents himself as a Monday-morning genius.

Yeah, the whining, too.

[Willets Point]

I think my problem was that on one hand they loved the "bad boy" Mets of the 80's who won games while living fast & large, and hated how the Mets management was watering down the team by trying to make a roster of good citizens. On the other hand they bitch about how the "bad boy" Mets treated them badly (which is pretty much a tangent off what FK said).

[Frayed Knot]

Maybe I should re-read it with a little more perspecitive and time between now and that year -- but I don't see how the authors' attempts to hammer square pegs into round holes in order to fit the pre-determined agenda would be any different.
Their insistance, for instance, that the loss of Strawberry was a major factor in the plummet of the team (and not just their notebooks) while totally ignoring the fact that he had basically 1/2 of one good season as a full-time player in his post-NYM career. And why do I get the impression that if they had kept him and his health and personal problems had caused the same decline in his skills that THAT would also have been cited as a reason for the decline?

IOW, let's start with the conclusion and retro-fit the facts to serve as evidence.

[Guest AG/DC]

Which is klassick klapisch.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Well, the loss of Strawberry DID hurt them.

But keeping him probably wouldn't have helped either.

While it was a mistake to let him go, it wasn't a mistake that they had any cause to regret. The Mets had him for his best years.

[Willets Point]

IIRC, I think they argued that the loss of Ray Knight also hurt the Mets although Knight's post-Mets career was nothing to write home about. I think they argued that the Mets lacked Knight's "fighting spirit" with the milquetoast players they'd acquired by 1992, but I would think that fighter or not, Knight would still suck at the plate by that time.

[Benjamin Grimm]

They're not alone in the Ray Knight thing. Even during the 1987 and 1988 seasons, while Knight was stinking it up in Baltimore and Detroit (I think) some Mets fans were lamenting that the Mets were stupid to let Knight go, and that he was the missing key to the 1987 Championship.

My memory is that they didn't like replacing Knight's fire with McReynolds' ice.

[Guest AG/DC]

Oops, missed the split.

What they actually replaced was Knight's sunset with Johnson's sunrise. Knight badly misplayed that negotiation.

[Frayed Knot]

The popular vet who's traded away or just let go is one of those things cited as a sign of looking forward when the team wins afterward (NYG: Tiki; NYY: Mattingly, Mike Stanley) but lamented as the missing piece when they don't (Knight, Backman) even if their post-trade career suggests otherwise.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Those lamenting the loss of Knight prolly also forgot how rotten he could be. I mean, he was Stinky McSuck in 85

[Benjamin Grimm]

He was. And he also cost Dwight Gooden a no-hitter by not throwing the ball to first when Keith Moreland hit that slow hopper.

But all that was forgotten when Knight punched Eric Davis.

[Guest AG/DC]

The Rocky Principle of Fan Forgivenes: Overall quality of a product is retroactively amplified based on the ability of the product to help the consumer overcome feelings of racial inadequacy.

[G-Fafif]

Good time capsule material for Mets fans if nothing else. While I'm not a fan of either the authors as newspapermen in the 21st century, I found their take on life with the high-rolling Mets interesting.

[stevejrogers]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Those lamenting the loss of Knight prolly also forgot how rotten he could be. I mean, he was Stinky McSuck in 85

Over the course of the rest of the 21 years since the lament from WFAN callers morphed from the specific to "that type of player" as if they hadn't noticed that those players just weren't anything special, and generally that type of team is good for a flukish year (1993 Phillies) rather than a dynastic team that those callers were begging for.