Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team

by A.M. Gittlitz

“Metropolitans expertly unpacks the 'cruel optimism' linking the yearning of a fanbase whose suffering is alleviated by sporadic miracles to the genuine dissident legacies that surrounded the team's creation and which have occasionally, miraculously, come back to life." —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude

A love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City, Metropolitans traces the electric and calamitous history of the New York Mets.

Metropolitans is for Mets fans, New York partisans, and everyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players—like the spectators—look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers. Along the way, A.M. Gittlitz re-introduces us to an eccentric cast of Metsian Joan Payson, the first woman to buy a Major League Baseball team; a young Tom Seaver with an interest in progressive politics; and the contentious but beloved Mike Piazza.

Gittlitz leads us through baseball’s amateur beginnings to the Mets’ first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements that many Mets players participated in. He guides us to the bad boy years, the exploitative development of farm academies in developing nations, and their inglorious purchase by a new breed of capitalist—even after which they remained lovable losers.

Metropolitans brilliantly shows us that sports have long been a site of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. From purportedly calming riots in ’69 to producing some of the greatest chokes in sporting history, from integration to desperate labor struggle against franchise owners, Metropolitans makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets—and why they are not just the team of the counterculture, the freaks, and the losers, but the beloved team of anyone with a beating heart.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Baseball, History, Politics

475 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2026

Reviews

[Jack Mcloone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This covers so much ground, but it is also incredibly readable. Whether or not you agree with the broader conclusions and ties and implications Gittlitz makes, he does a fantastic job weaving so much history together.

Where else are you gonna get a book that has both the Gay Grimace Mets and a breakdown of Occupy Wall Street?

[Ben Baraga · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this book for what it represented. A guy telling a cultural history of his city intertwined with the history of his own favorite sports team? As a somewhat aspiring writer, his success here is inspirational. His ability to use pop culture as a mechanism for telling an engaging history of populist movements and their spoilers is also informative to my future history teacher career. The first 150 pages or so got me really engaged—my experience reading about the late 1800s-early 1900s US usually lacks a good reference point, but the inclusion of Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Babe Ruth as recognizable figures makes the info about our country’s forgotten socialist history a lot “stickier.” The fall into post-WW2 paranoia about communism and “good vs evil” is especially accentuated by the Giants’ “shot heard round the world” WS-winning home run against the Dodgers in 1951. One of the first high-leverage sports moments widely televised, the event introduced Americans to a new world of divided camps and shocking finishes. You start to realize how the first hundred years of baseball’s existence was so rooted in collectivism and slow, intentional efforts towards coalition building, until huge moments like this one alerted the forces of capital that the game was too profitable to be left to mere mortals to manage. I really like this quote that the author includes from a sportswriter at the time:

“Now it is done…Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again” (page 99).


Chills! I’m spending a lot of time here because this was me at my most invested reading the book. Tracing political movements from the Tammany Hall machine, to Robert Moses’ insidious yet undeniable ambition, to the new Mets’ objection to the Vietnam war, Gittlitz is riding by the seat of his pants connecting every notable event over 200 years back to baseball. It’s invigorating. But it’s also long. And not all chapters are winners.

Particularly once we reach the present, the author seems to lose sight of his thesis. Our last glimpse comes in the 9/11 era, with a concession that “people’s team” doesn’t always equal leftist as the Mets embrace a populist conservative patriotism for the early aughts. It’s a compelling argument, but it needs some more effort to be squared with the rest of the book’s arc. Instead, we spend a lot more time with the story of the author’s rekindled fandom for the team. You blink, and suddenly the richest team in the league is back to being lovable underdogs in the eyes of Gittlitz, with irony losing out to nostalgia. Understandable, but kind of disappointing. The flat ending revisits none of the rich history of earlier pages, and it reframes the whole story negatively. Like, I don’t blame you for not wanting to wade the bloated mess we just finished either. Who’s driving this thing, anyway??

Oh well. I respect Gittlitz a lot for his ambition, and he’s clearly a skilled researcher. I’m just not sure I’d recommend this to a non-leftist baseball superfan. Good thing I am one!

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Net Galley & Publisher for the ebook ARC.

From the epilogue: The Mets are a team bursting with all the desperation, pain, chaos, and cruel optimism for a better future that persists through civilizations sunset.

I may have been born with a front row seat the Metsian circus - but my guiding principles of never looking away and holding on to hope for better - were also forged in the same flames that keep the our dump built out of capitalist thievery, burning bright.
Stay True. LFGM 🧡💙

[bayly hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

“invented by the middle class, baseball became a game that could be watched from the perspective of the boss, or that of the worker. one fan becomes a fantasy GM who desires only glory and curses all failure in “you’re fired” fantasies. the other identifies with the greats, journeymen and chokers alike, seeing baseball as a quotidian workplace drama— a shared experience of making choices and struggling through a life that does not fully belong to us.”

insanely readable for a 400 page nonfiction book about baseball history (and my beloved mets). loved it!

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had a life long, white hot hatred of the New York Mets. This in no way diminished my enjoyment of this magisterial work on the socio-political history of Baseball in New York City (and Brooklyn) from the inception of the professional game in 1876 through the Mets' epic collapse in 2025. Very insightful work.

[Zach Church · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fun history of the Mets (and New York baseball to some extent) that puts a spotlight on labor, social justice, social history, and wildcat-like fan engagement. The history itself may not be super-revealing to deep baseball people, but the writing moves along easily enough that it won't be a bother to read. For semi-casual fans like myself, it's a mix of good reminder and good background. While the book doesn't have a clear argument or central thesis, it has a purpose as a fan-driven counterpoint to more buttoned-up hagiography.

Overall, very original and insightful writing. A bunch of things I flagged below. The first one is really excellent.
---

"Invented by the middle class, baseball became a game that could be watched from either perspective of the boss, or that of the worker. One fan becomes a fantasy GM who desires only glory and curses all failure in 'you're fired' fantasies. The other identifies with the greats, journeymen, and chokers alike, seeing baseball as a quotidian workplace drama—a shared experience of making choices and struggling through a life that does not fully belong to us."

"Nothing makes us dumber than the electoral spectacle that turns millions of Americans into such fans of the plutocratic parties that they fill their lawns and plaster their bumpers with the names of their favorite cronies."

"With the loss of sleep and the fatigue of the games, we lose all appreciation of the interesting and the beautiful." - Mickey Ward

"The Mets would lose the next game and the next. Then the next, the next, and the next. After losing their first nine games, they finally popped champagne in Pittsburgh to christian their maiden win. They then proceeded to lose three more, and seven of their next nine, for an impressively bad opening of 3-16."

"The Mets fans—they don't worry about anything. They spill all over themselves, their neighbors, their wives, all over the stands. Great for business." - Polo Grounds beer vendor, 1960s

"He had seen in the sparse and dispassionate crowd at Baltimore Memorial Stadium that afternoon what their powerful opponents lacked—the Beach Boys' 'good vibrations' or Jim Morrison's _mojo_—a confidence that everything will supernaturally go your way."

"Professionals are never amazing, only amateurs are, because when they succeed, it's a surprise, a wonder, a true gift. Professionals do what they're supposed to do, every time, on cue; their craft consists in the elimination of chance, the displacement of the amateur." - Jerry Herron in "The Amazing Mets and Structuralist Activity," 1981

"Liberalism's bounce-back after Reagan and Bush Sr. sprang from the illusion that a conflictual history had ended with the Cold War, thus restoring an inevitable arc toward indefinite economic and social progress. The morning of terror sent that trajectory chaotically astray through the legs of the Harvard-educated rules-based international order. In a single morning, all widely held antiwar, antiracist, and antiauthoritarian principles of American politics were wiped away, replaced by millions of American flags, making the entire country look like any street in Long Island's whitest enclaves. The popular rebirth of bloodthirsty patriotism following the attacks would infect every aspect of American society—including, finally, her beloved _Metties_.

"But in a generally depoliticized climate, speaking out like this would have taken immense bravery. The sports establishment, especially in baseball, tends to only tolerate political statements from athletes like Seaver or Don Smith in the midst of mass and popular movements. In 2024, when these movements were suppressed by police and the Democrats' failed centrist strategy, it's likely the would have ended up censored like Carlos Delgado, or blacklisted like Paul Robeson and Colin Kaepernick. It was not the Mets' fault, then, that they fell short. In the fall of 2024, progressivism, like their pitching staff, _hit a wall_."

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 5* of five

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending April 12, 2026

The Publisher Says: A wide-reaching, revolutionary narrative history of the Team of Destiny (da Mets, for anyone not keeping score), that takes us from their 19th century inception to their 1962 resurrection to the present day.

A love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City history, Metropolitans brilliantly shows us that sports have long been a site of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. From purportedly calming riots in ’69 through the quality of their play to producing some of the greatest chokes in sporting history, from integration to desperate labor struggle against millionaire and billionaire franchise owners, Metropolitans makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets—and why it should be not just the team of the counterculture, the freaks, and the losers, but anyone with a beating heart.

Gittlitz leads us through baseball’s amateur beginnings to the Mets’ first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements that many Mets players participated in to the bad boy years, the exploitative development of farm academies in developing nations, and their inglorious purchase by a new breed of capitalist—even after which they remained lovable losers.

But this is a book not only for Mets fans, or New York partisans, but anyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players—like the spectators—look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm giving this book five stars because the Miracle Mets defeating the Orioles in 1969 was the first time I understood why my grandmother wanted to live to see the Cubs win the Series again (she didn't), and why my dad took me to freezyfrosty cold Candlestick Park to see the Giants play, and lose.

I can't not love anything about baseball, even as I get more and more uneasy with the concept of these gladiatorial games organized to give people some outlet for their desire to hate that is not threatening to "Them"—the capitalist class that very, very badly does not want you to expend that energy in political action.

Carefully entwined into the history of the US, the story of the Metropolitans and of team sports in general is told here with acuity and concision. It's a purpose and a point expressed best in this quote:

From this communal vantage, the abstractions of statistics and standings are confronted by the reality of what we are really seeing—not a game between two opposing teams, but a common human struggle, within and against the economic, legalistic, and mechanical structure of the game itself, and its role as opiate for the physical and existential pain of wage labor.

I can't really add anything to that statement except to say "+1" to it.

I'm old, so I remember when baseball mattered to lots and lots of Americans, held a real place in our cultural conversation. Football and basketball have that centrality now. But for those of us still loving the sound of a snapped bat connecting on a fastball, this book is catnip. Leftist social critique and economic analysis are seldom more appealingly presented than when entwined with a cultural mainstay of generations-long standing.

I hope I live long enough to see my Mets win the Series again.

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the New York Mets started play in 1962, they were not the first New York baseball team to have the team nickname of “Metropolitans” (not the official name, but many will call them that) nor were they the first team that captured the hearts of many of those in the middle class over the “richer” teams like the Yankees. This book by A.M. Gittlitz captures that connection between those citizens and the baseball team.

The book’s strengths are Gittlitz’s research and the passion for which he writes about the subject, whether it is baseball and the Mets or about the working class and the struggles they have with the political landscape, among many other things. I felt the writing and description of the early Metropolitans and the battles that players had to either form a union or field competing baseball leagues to go up against the National League in the late 19th century was the best aspect of the book.

He also does an excellent job of showing how the Mets of the 1960’s, capping it off with their 1969 championship, resonated with people who may not have cared one bit about baseball but showed how those who have been down for so long can still be successful. He goes deep into that topic as well as the other Mets teams, especially the 2000 team that lost the World Series to the Yankees. They too had connections with the middle class according to Gittlitz.

Where the book was a bit of a downer while reading it was the addition of much political commentary. This isn’t to say that I am one who says politics and sports don’t mix – they indeed do. It isn’t also because I want to insert my own political opinions while reading or writing this review because it doesn’t matter – what matters is how Gittlitz writes about his views and they come across as strong, consistent and passionate. I was only surprised at how much of the book discussed political issues without talking at all about the baseball connection. Nearly every sports book about a particular team, player or era will at least give a few sentences to the social and political climate at the time – this one goes well beyond that. And to the author’s credit, he does a very good job of laying out his beliefs and why he feels that way.

Overall, while I was surprised at the level of detail and how well connected the author put the Mets with the working class, it was quite an interesting book to read and one that is recommended not only for Mets and baseball fans, but also for readers who wish to read about politics and class struggles as well.

I wish to thank Astra Publishing House for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

[Ryan Wadley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Metropolitans
A.M. Gittlitz

Advanced Reader Copy from Net Galley. Thanks, Astra House.

New York City. City of amazing baseball lore, magnificent wins, and tragic, heart wrenching losses. This book tells the story of baseball’s beginnings with the Metropolitans and Gothams of the 19th century, the emergence of the New York Giants, Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, on to the New York Yankees with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio, the Brooklyn Dodgers with Gil Hodges and Jackie Robinson, and finally the re-emergence of the New York Mets with Tom Seaver, Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Mike Piazza, Francisco Lindor, and finally Juan Soto.

This story is captivating and from the beginning is fraught with peril. The ins and outs of ownership struggles, new and dying franchises, cross country moves, wealth and greed, unfair labor practices, racial tension and bigotry all amidst a backdrop of political tension, social uprising, even upheaval at times give a unique perspective to the development of America’s pastime.

Gittlitz does a great job of weaving the story of baseball into the story of America and the tumultuous 20th century. The world wars, the Great Depression, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the class and race struggles that defined much of the early 21st century in America all had direct impacts on Major League Baseball. This story is focused on the Mets, but the overarching themes give credence to the story of all major league franchises navigating the world and cities which they inhabit. The fan bases linking arms and loving their teams even though, in the end, it almost always ends in heartbreak.

This book is a well researched and thought provoking look at a city that loves its baseball. This city has found two distinct groups of fans to support their Yankees or their Mets. There is no in between and no love lost between the two franchises and fan bases. I learned a lot in this book and recommend it to New York baseball fans and really any baseball fans. It’s a unique blend of history, both social and political, and the baseball that took place along the way.

[Hallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"From this communal vantage, the abstractions of statistics and standings are confronted by the reality of what we are really seeing--not a game between two opposing teams, but a common human struggle, within and against the economic, legalistic, and mechanical structure of the game itself, and its role as opiate for the physical and existential pain of wage labor."

Truly amazing read. A detailed history of the Mets, from a Marxist historical analysis perspective, written by a true fan of the orange and blue. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the origins of America's favorite pastime and the few highs and many lows of the New York Mets, as those peaks and valleys coincided with various class, civil rights, and labor struggles in American history. The Mets' perennial struggles reflect the near constant belittling of the working class in this country. Even now, the Mets maintain their status as "The People's Team" despite having the highest (or one of the highest) payrolls in the MLB. It was simultaneously heartening and disheartening to watch the players fight for their rights as laborers, only for capital (the MLB, the team owners, the government) to drive a wedge between them and the rest of the country's working people. Just a fascinating book overall. Loved it. A great message for baseball fans and everyone else working and living paycheck to paycheck alike. As Francisco Lindor said after the 2024 NLCS loss: "You have to build. You have to fight for each other. You have to create that bond and that trust. And like I said, fight for each other."

Netgalley and Astra Publishing House provided me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life as a leftist sports fan is always being Charlie Brown about to kick the football. You always feel like this time, Lucy won’t pull the ball away, the pigskin will go end over end into the distance and you’ll feel like Adam Vinateri in the Super Bowl. Unfortunately for Charlie Brown and for me, sports have a funny way of mimicking the real world around us. The big money, power backed interest hold the majority of the cards and when the dealer turns over the river card, you’re gonna need a lot to break right.

Here, in ‘Metropolitans’ Met fandom is cast as a lens for viewing the world. Through the shared history of New York baseball, the Mets ability to once in a blue moon captivate the city is why you can’t ever give up. The strongest point of Metropolitans is that sports are both an athletic contest and a microcosm of humanity. That through shared struggle we can all find a deeper level of connection and be more human.

[Cameron Beams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolute essential for Mets, baseball, and politically interested fans alike, you can judge people's mental standing of politics based on their reactions to this book. I don't agree with Gittlitz's politics. I am liberal, yes, but I am not an overt and out socialist. I am however, an appreciater of great writing and even moreso, Mets baseball.

I entered Metropolitans looking to get an insight from a true-blooded Queens native on my favorite baseball team, but ended up getting so much more. This book will inform you on everything the peoples-team both stood and stands for now, and will be infinitely entertaining while doing so.

I can agree with fellow readers that Glittitz's political commentaries seem out-of-place and not so tied together at times, but to act like those messages are text ruining is laughable. Read Metropolitans, you'll love it.

[Phil Cornell · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the baseball world is a nail when you solely have a hammer or, in the case of “Metropolitans,” a hammer and sickle. A.M. Gittlitz traces the parallel plights of the Mets and the proletariat, both long-suffering, over the past century and a half. The dense writing is alternately informative (especially about the ‘86 Mets), entertaining (dubbing the prior team ownership “Wilponzis”) and over the top (likening the building of the the 1960s Mets to the building of the atomic bomb). Some baseball references must be ruled errors: Ron Darling didn’t start Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the Bill Buckner classic. Still, you have to forgive anyone who has persevered through the dashed hopes of the Yankees-Mets World Series and Occupy Wall Street.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope Gittlitz was doing regular calisthenics during the composition of this book, because some of the historical-materialist analysis is a streeeetttttch, but I am nevertheless sympathetic to the broad contours of the argument and welcome serious, politically engaged sports writing ("Invented by the middle class, baseball became a game that could be watched from the perspective of the boss, or that of the worker. One fan becomes a fantasy GM who desires only glory and curses all failure in 'you’re fired' fantasies. The other identifies with the greats, journeymen and chokers alike, seeing baseball as a quotidian workplace drama—a shared experience of making choices and struggling through a life that does not fully belong to us." - amen!). A lot of fun!

[Kyle Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

No surprise here, but I really loved this. Spanning from the rise of professional baseball in the 1800s (did you know the Mets were not the first baseball team to be called that?) to their cinderella run 2024 season, A.M. Gittlitz ties together the Mets’ rich history with the rise of New York City, the class divides and union crusades that created the modern sport of baseball, and the idea of “the people’s team” representing the downtrodden of the city.

Very well done, let’s go Mets baby love da Mets

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Marxist history of baseball, focused on New York, that covers the full sweep of both how sports franchises-- owned by fragile plutocrats and subject purely to the whims of their inflated ego-- both exemplify the sham-democracy of our times and also show how organizing-- as workers/players, as fans, and as neighbors of ballparks-- can take-away the sham and create a truly democratic world.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not your typical sports book. Be prepared to see some of your Mets faves in a whole new light, for better or worse. Thanks to the publisher for my ARC!

[James Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

an absolute humdinger, hoo-ah

[KD]

NYT Article, "26 Nonfiction Books We’re Excited About This Spring," 2026

[Mario · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am now an ardent Marxist, and an even more ardent Mets fan.

#LFGM

[Nicolette M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who knew baseball could be so political?