Long Before The Miracle: The Making of the New York Mets

Pre-dating the Mets by seven years, BILL SULLIVAN followed Casey Stengel's expansion team over his transistor radio as a 6-year-old in upstate New York. He would have tuned in sooner but the Mets didn't play ball until April 1962. Sullivan lived in Schenectady, NY, a Frank Thomas home run from the Little League stadium where future Met Billy Connors played for the hometown squad which won the Little League World Series in 1954 and finished second in 1953. And in 1969, he listened to the Mets clinch the World Series. In detention. As a 14-year-old freshman. He got the demerit for refusing to remove the earphone that connected him to the radio broadcast in his ninth-grade advanced art class. In detention, he sat in the last row and re-strung the cord beneath his shirt and to his ear. Then he cupped his hand over that ear and pretended to read while listening. Long Before The Miracle: The Making of the New York Mets is Sullivan's second book. His first, Sullivan's Practical Landscape Design, also is on Amazon. When he toured the Mets Hall of Fame in 2012-off the rotunda at Citi Field-he found he had many more interesting relics in his own collection-a Polo Grounds seat; Salada Tea plastic discs with faces of Mets players in color; felt patches from the windbreaker he wore as a kid; a pennant with the 1963 team picture in black and white; a World Series media pin; Fleer and Topps baseball cards; netting from the Shea Stadium backstop; game programs; team yearbooks; Post baseball cards cut from the back of cereal boxes; uniform patches worn on the right sleeve, and a baseball autographed by the 1963 Mets with a stamped signature from National League president Warren Giles. This discovery inspired him to research and talk to as many early Mets players as he could reach so he could tell his own story of the Mets. Early in his career, Sullivan was a college sports information director and sports writer for various newspapers. An impetus for Sullivan to "pursue" the game came from being cut three times in baseball tryouts-twice in high school and once in college. For the last six years, Sullivan actually has played ball, pitching in the Ponce de Leon Baseball League in the Washington, DC suburbs. His team's play often mimics that of the early Mets. But like the Amazins, he and his teammates love the game.