Dana Brand. Mets Fan

Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Fall-Wntr, 2007 by Ralph McIntyre

Dana Brand. Mets Fan. McFarland: 2007. 201 pp. Paper: 29.95.

I am a Cleveland Indians fan. There I said it. There are, much to the consternation of lesser franchises, certain baseball franchises whose very fans have become metaphors--the Yankees, the Cubs, the Dodgers. They become their own nation, maintain their own cache, and their fans in turn assume their position as, depending on the franchise, long-suffering, fanatic, insufferable, arrogant, blue collar, etc. Since that damn 1969 season, the Mets, of course, have maintained such a profile-and Dana Beard, who in his off hours is a professor of English at Hofstra and has published prodigiously in his field of American literature, understands the peculiar responsibility of such fans to probe the psyche of their loyalty and to mine from its logic a sort of case study that will help fans of lesser franchises (could the Texas Rangers, the Florida Marlins, or, gulp, my Indians, to name only a few, sustain a collection of essays?).

The delight in this collection is not merely the writing (not that a journalism background necessarily flattens the prose but given Beard's background in literature the prose soars, lyrically satisfying and splendidly cadenced) but more its scope. Often such fan-psychologies are prompted by a championship season (witness the flurry of tomes following the Red Sox World Series run) or by the heroics of a single long-run franchise player. But here Brand extends his vision across nearly forty years of Mets history, the good and the bad, the success and the failure, and in turn the book becomes a history of a fan, a revelation of how such energy maintains its zest--like a study of a long and successful marriage. The essays are witty, brief, and cutting with a kind of Seinfeld-esque feel, prompted most often by memorable plays (or players--he is particularly strong on Seaver and Hernandez), memorable hits, and memorable nights at Shea. The lion's share of Brand's recollections centers on the outstanding teams of the mid-1980s, and here the prose sings with the warmth of classic baseball writing. But Brand is quick to dissect the problem years, the bad trades, the errant players, the disastrous managers. Of course the Yankee rivalry looms large but to Brand's credit he is faithful to the Mets psyche and to exploring what makes the crosstown team its own. This is not sportswriting but rather the investigation into the import of what happens to a person who becomes a fan, the psychology of loyalty, the necessary balance that it requires between praise and criticism, and most endearingly here the savage cut of disappointment, the telling of which is always more fascinating than tales of championship seasons and Hall of Fame players. This is a wonderful read--a tonic revelation of the logic of the inexplicable faith we put into clubs, how fans become part of the game they watch, how in the end the fan is something higher and finer than those who simply follow sports, the promiscuous enthusiast who never quite understands the meaning of commitment.

Ralph McIntyre

Zanesville (OH) College