A.M. Gittlitz Discusses Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team with Special Guest Kevin Baker, Author of The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City

Join us for a conversation with local author A. M. Gittlitz on Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team ! A love letter to a franchise and a thrilling study of New York City, A. M. Gittlitz's Metropolitans traces the electric and calamitous story of the New York Mets. Metropolitans opens with the story of baseball's amateur beginnings before taking us to the bleachers to watch the Mets' first heady World Series with the civil rights and anti-war movements on its heels. It shows us that sports have long been a site of political struggle, rousing class consciousness, and animating fights for racial equality. Through it all, Metropolitans makes a deeply humane and convincing argument for the fascinating singularity of the New York Mets. Gittlitz will be joined in conversation by historian Kevin Baker, author of The New York Game , a history of baseball and New York City that details how our city was the place where the modern game of baseball was shaped — and how the Mets have their origins not in 1962 Queens, but in nineteenth-century Brooklyn. A. M. Gittlitz is a writer and co-host of This Wreckage podcast. An amateur scholar of radical history and counterculture, he is the author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism and Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team . A Mets fan since conception, his favorite player of all time is Edgardo Alfonzo, and his favorite restaurant is the Vegan City stand at Citi Field. Kevin Baker is the author of The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City . Its sequel, Golden Age: New York Baseball in Its Glory , will be out from Knopf next spring. He has written six novels, including the New York Times bestseller, Paradise Alley , and is the author or co-author of five histories, a graphic novel (words only!) , and a Reggie Jackson memoir. He was a writer and researcher on the Ken Burns documentary, The U. S. and the Holocaust , and is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.