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My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom
A love letter to New York Mets fandom—the triumphs, the heartbreak, and everything in between
Childhood for Evan Roberts was defined by outings to the old Shea Stadium with his father, always with a scorebook in hand.
What began as a gameday ritual replete with misspelled player names and scrawled symbols turned into an obsession with scoring every game he watched, one which persisted as Roberts rose through the ranks at WFAN. Taken together, those scorebooks form a living, breathing Mets diary spanning 30 years of thrilling—and, at times, tortured—fandom.
My Baseball Bible is an exercise in memory and nostalgia, and a meditation on the things that stick with us as sports fans. With his personal scorecards as a guide, Roberts brings to life some of the most unforgettable moments in Mets lore, offering a fresh perspective on the highs and lows of being a die-hard fan.
Meticulously kept history mixes with personal recollections and behind-the-scenes anecdotes covering touchstone events such as Johan Santana’s no-hitter, Robin Ventura’s grand slam “single”, and the loss that Roberts has never quite gotten over.
By turns heartfelt and hilarious, Roberts delivers a thrilling and wholly unique journey through modern Mets history.
Childhood for Evan Roberts was defined by outings to the old Shea Stadium with his father, always with a scorebook in hand.
What began as a gameday ritual replete with misspelled player names and scrawled symbols turned into an obsession with scoring every game he watched, one which persisted as Roberts rose through the ranks at WFAN. Taken together, those scorebooks form a living, breathing Mets diary spanning 30 years of thrilling—and, at times, tortured—fandom.
My Baseball Bible is an exercise in memory and nostalgia, and a meditation on the things that stick with us as sports fans. With his personal scorecards as a guide, Roberts brings to life some of the most unforgettable moments in Mets lore, offering a fresh perspective on the highs and lows of being a die-hard fan.
Meticulously kept history mixes with personal recollections and behind-the-scenes anecdotes covering touchstone events such as Johan Santana’s no-hitter, Robin Ventura’s grand slam “single”, and the loss that Roberts has never quite gotten over.
By turns heartfelt and hilarious, Roberts delivers a thrilling and wholly unique journey through modern Mets history.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published April 2, 2024
14 people are currently reading
1307 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 17, 2024
I think we are lucky this book exists. That thought came to me while reading this the other day. Does every fan base have a book that basically covers the era of their childhood? Especially if that era DIDNT include a championship? I doubt it.
I grew up a die-hard Mets fan in the 90s and 2000s. I’ve always been a huge fan of Roberts, even when he was a WFAN part-timer. As arrogant as I probably sometimes am about my knowledge and love of my teams - and the Mets are MY team- I’ve always viewed him as the voice of this fan base. He was the only one who could have written this book and he did it well. I remembered 95% of the games in this book and had my own memories associated with them. That was fun to revisit.
The book is not perfect. Too much play by play at points, not enough memoir (which is what makes this book sing) and a few pretty obvious editing errors, but a read that is essential for any Mets fan who grew up with this team in this era. It hit some major book tenants for me - was excited to pick it up each day, relatively hard to put down, made me feel something, sad to see it end.
4.3/5
I grew up a die-hard Mets fan in the 90s and 2000s. I’ve always been a huge fan of Roberts, even when he was a WFAN part-timer. As arrogant as I probably sometimes am about my knowledge and love of my teams - and the Mets are MY team- I’ve always viewed him as the voice of this fan base. He was the only one who could have written this book and he did it well. I remembered 95% of the games in this book and had my own memories associated with them. That was fun to revisit.
The book is not perfect. Too much play by play at points, not enough memoir (which is what makes this book sing) and a few pretty obvious editing errors, but a read that is essential for any Mets fan who grew up with this team in this era. It hit some major book tenants for me - was excited to pick it up each day, relatively hard to put down, made me feel something, sad to see it end.
4.3/5
March 8, 2024
I can commiserate with author and WFAN radio personality Evan Roberts. About 20 years prior to the beginning of his run scoring Mets baseball, I was pretty much the same. I’d gone to the sporting department of our local TSS Department Store and bought books used to score baseball games. Unfortunately, unlike Roberts, my father didn’t have season tickets to the Mets, and we attended only about once a month or so. Add into that a time when there was usually only one television in the house, and my days (and nights) of scoring baseball were sporadic. All of those books were tossed by my parents years ago as well.
However, Roberts’ weren’t, and here he has assembled a narrative of Mets baseball over the last 30 years. It’s an era when I was still a fan, not living far from him, but was interrupted by working and raising a family. Soccer games and dance recitals took precedent over attending baseball games. However, reading this book brought a lot of that time back to me, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I quite enjoyed watching Mike Piazza as a Mets player.
Of course, the freakin’ Yankees would take advantage of it, led by the Captain of being a pain in my ass, Derek Jeter…
Roberts chose 81 games from his scorebook collection to highlight. Some of them are personal favorites of his, that have no real bearing on fans’ memories of the game but are a narrative to his life. Others are memorable games for Mets fans, particularly once they began getting to the post-season with a bit of regularity during the Piazza era.
He’s reprinted the pages from those scorebooks for each of the games he chose, along with a narrative of what he remembers from the game. The early pages are a child’s scrawl, while he gets more sophisticated and neater as time goes on. One complaint I have is that his print is quite small, and it’s difficult to make out even the players’ names, even reading the book on my computer where the reproduced pages are pretty large. I do like the style of his scorebook over the one I used to use way back in the 1970s when I used to score the games off of radio and television. It lends itself to more detail about the game itself and once you understand how to score a game, you’d have no problem reading these, except for his tiny print.
To read my full review, please go to My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom by Evan Roberts
However, Roberts’ weren’t, and here he has assembled a narrative of Mets baseball over the last 30 years. It’s an era when I was still a fan, not living far from him, but was interrupted by working and raising a family. Soccer games and dance recitals took precedent over attending baseball games. However, reading this book brought a lot of that time back to me, particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I quite enjoyed watching Mike Piazza as a Mets player.
Of course, the freakin’ Yankees would take advantage of it, led by the Captain of being a pain in my ass, Derek Jeter…
Roberts chose 81 games from his scorebook collection to highlight. Some of them are personal favorites of his, that have no real bearing on fans’ memories of the game but are a narrative to his life. Others are memorable games for Mets fans, particularly once they began getting to the post-season with a bit of regularity during the Piazza era.
He’s reprinted the pages from those scorebooks for each of the games he chose, along with a narrative of what he remembers from the game. The early pages are a child’s scrawl, while he gets more sophisticated and neater as time goes on. One complaint I have is that his print is quite small, and it’s difficult to make out even the players’ names, even reading the book on my computer where the reproduced pages are pretty large. I do like the style of his scorebook over the one I used to use way back in the 1970s when I used to score the games off of radio and television. It lends itself to more detail about the game itself and once you understand how to score a game, you’d have no problem reading these, except for his tiny print.
To read my full review, please go to My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom by Evan Roberts
May 27, 2024
4.25 Famed WFAN host and fanatical Mets fan, Evan Roberts, has been scoring Mets hames since he was a young kid- his former co-host Craig Carton told him he should write a book using those scorecards as the basis for telling his story. A truly great and clever idea! What a fun (though at times depressing) walk down Mets memory lane. Evan shares his Mets stories as well as how they interspersed with his own life story. They say being a Mets fan builds character, as you learn to embrace soul crushing disappointment after soul crushing disappointment. Well, this book was a fun and clever reminder of all the character is Mets fans have!
March 17, 2024
This is a great record of one man's score recording of the New York Mets. With personal anecdotes and tales related to the specific games that were scored, the author tells the history of the franchise.
March 6, 2025
A very good trip down memory lane from the 90's up until the disappointing end of the Mets 2022 season. This is a must read for any Mets fan and it will probably only appeal to those of us who stay true to the orange and blue. LFGM!
April 17, 2024
A fun look back at Mets baseball. As someone who also scored games as a kid at Shea Stadium, this book was very nostalgic.
April 19, 2024
A must read for every Mets fan!
July 12, 2024
You’re probably not going to get much out of this if you don’t know Evan from the radio, but I enjoyed it well enough.
August 21, 2024
For Mets fans, a look back at some interesting games over the years. Would not be interesting to anyone else
June 18, 2024
You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at my new blog, Mr. Book's Book Reviews.
Thank you Triumph Books for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Mr. Book just finished My Mets Bible: 30 Years Of Baseball Fandom, by Evan Roberts.
Roberts is a WFAN radio host and this is a book in which he picked out his 81 favorite Mets games that he kept score from, dating back to his childhood.
Among the highlights were the chapters on Jackie Robinson Day at Shea in 1997, the first regular season Subway Series (and the book was good enough that even this life-long Yankees fan could enjoy much of what he wrote about their first ever game—the infamous (from Yankees viewpoint) Dave Mlicki game), Robin Ventura’s walk-off “grand slam single” followed by Andruw Jones’s pennant-winning walk-off walk the next day.
The 2000’s have brought us chapter highlights like Dwight Gooden’s return to Shea in a Yankees uniform, the 2000 World Series (that would be a valid use of infamous, for a Mets fan, but not from me), the Clemens-Piazza incidents in 2000, the Mets’ collapse in 2007, a 20-inning game against the Cardinals, Johan Santana’s no hitter (and the author of course admits the umpire blew the call), Jacob deGrom’s MLB debut (a 1-0 loss to the Yankees), the Mets sweeping the Cubs in the 2015 NLCS before losing the World Series to the Royals and Chris Heston no-hitting the Mets.
I do give the author a lot of credit for not just picking out Mets’ victories. I didn’t keep track of their record in games he wrote about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a losing record.
You definitely do not have to be a Mets fan to enjoy this book. As I’ve made clear in this review, I am a life-long Yankees fan. But, I am also a life-long Mets hater. However, when it comes to my reading and my work, I take pride in my ability to put aside those biases. I give this book an A. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
I do have to object to one thing, in Roberts’ writeup about the Mets’ 10 run 8th inning against the Braves in 2000 that won a game in which they were losing 8-1 right before the rally. He refers to it as “infamous”. Infamous means notable for only bad reasons. From a Braves’ point of view, that comeback was infamous. From a Mets’ point of view, that comeback was famous. Big difference. If I objected at work when a Yankees fan misused infamous to describe Bucky Dent’s home run, then I must do the same here.
And this is a very minor point, but I have to bring it up too. The author did misspell Zack Wheeler’s name, spelling it with an “h”. I have long been advocating that all of the Zach’s and Zack’s, and we’ll even invite Zac Gallen, need to get together and agree on one standard spelling of the name.
But neither of these things reduced my enjoyment of the book in any way.
This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.
Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 18, 2024.
Thank you Triumph Books for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Mr. Book just finished My Mets Bible: 30 Years Of Baseball Fandom, by Evan Roberts.
Roberts is a WFAN radio host and this is a book in which he picked out his 81 favorite Mets games that he kept score from, dating back to his childhood.
Among the highlights were the chapters on Jackie Robinson Day at Shea in 1997, the first regular season Subway Series (and the book was good enough that even this life-long Yankees fan could enjoy much of what he wrote about their first ever game—the infamous (from Yankees viewpoint) Dave Mlicki game), Robin Ventura’s walk-off “grand slam single” followed by Andruw Jones’s pennant-winning walk-off walk the next day.
The 2000’s have brought us chapter highlights like Dwight Gooden’s return to Shea in a Yankees uniform, the 2000 World Series (that would be a valid use of infamous, for a Mets fan, but not from me), the Clemens-Piazza incidents in 2000, the Mets’ collapse in 2007, a 20-inning game against the Cardinals, Johan Santana’s no hitter (and the author of course admits the umpire blew the call), Jacob deGrom’s MLB debut (a 1-0 loss to the Yankees), the Mets sweeping the Cubs in the 2015 NLCS before losing the World Series to the Royals and Chris Heston no-hitting the Mets.
I do give the author a lot of credit for not just picking out Mets’ victories. I didn’t keep track of their record in games he wrote about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a losing record.
You definitely do not have to be a Mets fan to enjoy this book. As I’ve made clear in this review, I am a life-long Yankees fan. But, I am also a life-long Mets hater. However, when it comes to my reading and my work, I take pride in my ability to put aside those biases. I give this book an A. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
I do have to object to one thing, in Roberts’ writeup about the Mets’ 10 run 8th inning against the Braves in 2000 that won a game in which they were losing 8-1 right before the rally. He refers to it as “infamous”. Infamous means notable for only bad reasons. From a Braves’ point of view, that comeback was infamous. From a Mets’ point of view, that comeback was famous. Big difference. If I objected at work when a Yankees fan misused infamous to describe Bucky Dent’s home run, then I must do the same here.
And this is a very minor point, but I have to bring it up too. The author did misspell Zack Wheeler’s name, spelling it with an “h”. I have long been advocating that all of the Zach’s and Zack’s, and we’ll even invite Zac Gallen, need to get together and agree on one standard spelling of the name.
But neither of these things reduced my enjoyment of the book in any way.
This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.
Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 18, 2024.
July 4, 2025
This book should have been written for me and me alone and this should have been a five-star review. Like the author, I compulsively keep score at every baseball game: in person, on TV, even old-time telecasts or radio broadcasts on YouTube channels (currently a meaningless Mets/Red game from 1982). I became a Mets fan in '81, and my oldest scorecard is from a classic July 27, 1984 Dwight Gooden tilt vs. the Cubs during the heat of the NL East pennant race.
I was a big WFAN listener in the '80s and '90s, but drifted away from the station at right around the time Evan Roberts joined, so I couldn't tell you much about him other than his first and last name. I'm about a decade older, and my "golden age" of Mets fandom dissolved before his book -- his 101 favorite Mets scorecards ranging from 1992 to 2022 -- ends.
"My Mets Bible" is not well written. Roberts' language is coarse and full of typos. It's not lyrical or poetic -- it's Dude-Bro language. For me, the essence of Mets fandom is heartbreak and failure, wait-til-next-year, we're as comfortable losing as winning. Roberts is a die-hard Mets fan, as am I, but he writes with Yankee (or New York Ranger)-fan energy, loud, in-your-face, demanding victory, personally offended at losses, and given to personal insults about opposing players (Chase Utley I can understand, but the reference to Dan Uggla's "fat face", as the Marlins eliminate the Mets on the final day of their epic 2007 collapse, is awful -- Roberts in his smug back-cover author photo makes Uggla look like Jason Tyner). Just based on his tone I can guess who he voted for in November 2024 (seemingly confirmed by his Twitter profile).
There is room for a great book about the love of scorekeeping at baseball games, and one fan's journey across the decades with a compulsively underachieving team, one currently owned by the bad guy from "Billions" and which hasn't won a title in almost 40 years. This sadly is, in some respects, the opposite of that great book.
I was a big WFAN listener in the '80s and '90s, but drifted away from the station at right around the time Evan Roberts joined, so I couldn't tell you much about him other than his first and last name. I'm about a decade older, and my "golden age" of Mets fandom dissolved before his book -- his 101 favorite Mets scorecards ranging from 1992 to 2022 -- ends.
"My Mets Bible" is not well written. Roberts' language is coarse and full of typos. It's not lyrical or poetic -- it's Dude-Bro language. For me, the essence of Mets fandom is heartbreak and failure, wait-til-next-year, we're as comfortable losing as winning. Roberts is a die-hard Mets fan, as am I, but he writes with Yankee (or New York Ranger)-fan energy, loud, in-your-face, demanding victory, personally offended at losses, and given to personal insults about opposing players (Chase Utley I can understand, but the reference to Dan Uggla's "fat face", as the Marlins eliminate the Mets on the final day of their epic 2007 collapse, is awful -- Roberts in his smug back-cover author photo makes Uggla look like Jason Tyner). Just based on his tone I can guess who he voted for in November 2024 (seemingly confirmed by his Twitter profile).
There is room for a great book about the love of scorekeeping at baseball games, and one fan's journey across the decades with a compulsively underachieving team, one currently owned by the bad guy from "Billions" and which hasn't won a title in almost 40 years. This sadly is, in some respects, the opposite of that great book.
May 6, 2025
If there was ever book that was written exclusively for Mets fans it's Evan Roberts' "My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom". It's quite amazing how Roberts has kept score for every Mets game pretty much is entire life. Roberts writes about a bunch of Mets games many of which I actually remember (thanks to Roberts). "My Mets Bible" is a great history of the last 30 years of the Mets. Roberts' fandom, and his baseball knowledge, is off charts. Roberts doesn't take himself too serious and delivers a lot of laughs. Fans of other teams probably won't like this book but that's fine. It wasn't written for them. It was written for Mets fans, like me.
August 29, 2025
This was a great book and very funny! If you are a NYM fan I would definitely try reading this book! It talks about some very memorable times and the way Evan wrote the book is very funny and hooks you! Very cool to learn and hear some older players names as well as see the early career of current players
March 24, 2025
Really fun book that helped me fill some significant gaps in my knowledge of Mets history (particularly the ‘90s and early 2000s).
July 25, 2025
Great book. Well written, great insight into a good man and the franchise he loves. Also pretty funny.
November 18, 2025
For the love of God, Evan, hire an editor.
November 29, 2025
As a Mets fan, it’s super cool that this book exists!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews