This collection of well-crafted essays spans more than 40 years of franchise history but hews to a single theme: the experience--sometimes humorous, sometimes painful--of being a fan of the New York Mets. From the sound of jets overhead to Keith Hernandez and the Seinfeld connection, Hofstra professor Dana Brand writes about the experiences and lore that make baseball in Queens unique. Mets fans will recognize themselves in this book, and everyone who enjoys great baseball writing will delight in the reading.

In his book Brand traces the origin of the flaneur, a detached and powerful urban spectator, to seventeenth century English literature. He then discusses the development of the English language tradition of the flaneur in its social, cultural and philosophical contexts. Taking the encounter with the spectator and city life as an important point of contact with modernity, Brand offers new readings of three of the most important American writers of the nineteenth century, Poe, Hawthorne, and Whitman, and the way in which, at various points in their work, each author represents a spectator who...

Brand details the final two seasons of the Mets in Shea Stadium, capturing the complex emotions experienced by fans in two consecutive seasons in which the Mets were eliminated from contention on the final day of the regular seasons.

Dana Brand traces the origin of the flaneur to seventeenth-century English literature and to nineteenth-century American literature.