In between his romances with baseball, in early 1969 Bill Veeck took up the challenge of managing Boston's semi-moribund Suffolk Downs racetrack. "Being of sound mind and in reasonable possession of my faculties," Veeck wrote, "I marshaled my forces, at the tender age of fifty-four, and marched upon the city of Boston, Massachusetts, like a latter-day Ben Franklin, to seek my fame and fortune as the operator of a racetrack. Two years later, fortune having taken one look at my weathered features and shaken its hoary locks, I retreated, smiling gamely." When he took over the track, Veeck had yet to learn that the normal daily output of some sixteen hundred horses (including straw) would amount to so much, or be so hard to dispose of. But that was the least of his problems. In the tough-minded and Tabasco-tongued prose that is his trademark, Veeck recalls the battles he won and lost, the fun he had, and what he discovered about horse racing at "Sufferin' Downs." It's a zesty, complicated story but a relentlessly fascinating one about the inside workings of one of the most popular sports in America.

Bill Veeck was an inspired team builder, a consummate showman, and one of the greatest baseball men ever involved in the game. His classic autobiography, written with the talented sportswriter Ed Linn, is an uproarious book packed with information about the history of baseball and tales of players and owners, including some of the most entertaining stories in all of sports literature.

Here, back in print, is Jimmy Breslin's marvelous account of the improbable saga of the New York Mets' first year, as Bill Veeck notes in his Introduction, "preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure." Indeed the 1962 Mets were the worst major league baseball team ever to take the field. (The title of the book is a quote from Casey Stengel, their manager at the time.) Breslin casts the Mets, who lost 120 games out of a possible 162 that year, as a lovable bunch of losers. And, he argues, they were good for baseball, coming as a welcome antidote to "the era of the businessman in sports...as dry and agonizing a time as you would want to see." Although they were written forty years ago, many of Breslin's comments will strike a chord with today's sports fan, fed up with the growing commercialism of the games. Against this trend Breslin sets the exploits of "Marvelous" Marv Throneberry, Stengel, and the rest of the hapless Mets. "Wonderful."—Charles Salzberg, New York Times. "A touching, enjoyable, and interesting addition to anybody's sports reading list."—Patrick Conway