The public is warmly encouraged to come to my reception and reading for METS FAN on Thursday, November 1 at Hofstra. The reception begins at 5:30 in the first floor lobby of C.V. Starr Hall on the South Campus (on California Avenue, just south of the Hempstead Turnpike). The talk begins at 6:30 in the Monroe Lecture Center Theatre right next door.
At the reception, there will be free and plentiful food and drink, and the New York Mets have graciously contributed Mets blinkie pins that will be distributed to everyone who attends. A Gotham Baseball Magazine radio podcast will also be broadcasting from the reception and the event. Mets fans and others will be welcome to offer their comments on the radio show. If you’re a reader of my blog, please make a special point of coming up to me at the reception or after the talk and saying hello. I will be very glad to meet you.
It’s best to park on the North Campus, where there’s lots of parking, and then cross the Hempstead Turnpike to the South Campus, either at the light or over the Unispan.
So please come and visit me in my native habitat at Hofstra, where I really am a professor. See, here I am telling Honors College students stuff about Virgil’s Aeneid that they never knew before! Look how appreciative they are. You too can feel as if you’re in my class. Come to the reading!
Hi Dana,
As I told you in my email to you, I am looking forward to meeting you and purchasing the book. I always believed you were a professor at Hofstra. LOL! Maybe you can convince Hofstra to create a Mets History class for actual college credits! See you Thursday.
A course on the Mets, and the history and culture of the Mets, or any other baseball team would in fact be a perfectly legitimate thing for a university to have. Sports is a vital part of culture and studying a team would really lend itself to interdisciplinary study. I’m not sure I would want to get it all together myself but I’m sure that there are a lot of people who would. I know that Hofstra does have courses and first-year seminars on baseball and literature and culture. I know that other colleges and universities have as well.
GET RID OF REYES GET AROD! I’m sure Reyes can make it on Dancing With the Stars
I had the pleasure of attending Dana’s reading of Mets Fan at Hofstra on Nov.1. It was really great. They had pigs in blankets, egg rolls, chicken wings and mozzarella sticks, plus soda and water before the reading.
I waited on line to purchase the book and finally meet Dana. I was talking to Lois, one of Dana’s students and she said he was a great professor. We talked about the Mets. When I finally met Dana, he was just as nice as he is on the blogs. I felt like I knew him forever, and he wrote a very nice inscription in my book: “To my longstanding fan, it was great to meet you .” His colleague, English professor Paula and her husband Russell took my picture with Dana. They are big Mets fans too, and Paula and I talked about our crushes on the ‘69 Mets (mine was Ken Boswell, hers was Art Shamsky).
Then we went to the reading in a neighboring hall. Dana read essays from his book, and although I had read some of them on the website, there is something special about the author reading what he wrote. The audience was very appreciative. Afterwards he answered questions. It was a very enjoyable couple of hours. I am looking forward to reading the whole book.
If any of you who read this and are Mets fans, get a chance to see Dana do another reading in the tri state area, I would urge you to go. It was a special night.
Thanks for that account, Vicki, very nice! Sounds like a grand time indeed.
Ken Boswell, eh? Was it the sideburns?
Dana, I do hope to meet you in person one of these days!
You’re welcome Chris. You really would have loved it. Maybe Dana can do a book tour and visit you in VA.
When you are 16, it is hard to figure out why you have a crush on someone. Since it was ‘69, most of the Mets had sideburns, so while that might have been part of the reason, I just liked his looks in general, and his Texas accent. The ‘69 Mets were just very special to me.
If you have read Dana’s book, you know how great it is, and if you haven’t, get it as soon as possible. It will help fill the time until spring training.
I am so glad that I attended your book signing, Professor Brand. Listening to you talk about the Mets gave me goosebumps and it brought back so many of my own childhood memories, even though I have only followed the Mets since 1997 and have only known the wonders of Shea since 99.
You really put what it means to be a Mets fan into perspective and it made me realize why I root for this team, even after a collapse like they suffered this year, and I can’t wait until the 2008 season because you never know!
Reading your work is inspirational, especially since I love writing about baseball and the Mets as a hobby.
I’m glad that I found your Blog Professor Brand and I look forward to reading your wonderful essays in the future! Here’s to the 2008 METS… without A-ROD!!! Let’s Go Mets!
Thanks to all of you for being so kind and appreciative. I loved the Hofstra event. It was so much fun to meet people I knew from the Internet and see them all together with my students and Hofstra people I had never met before. And it was such a great audience, all laughing and crying at just the right times.
As a straight man, I never had the pleasure of having crushes on any of the Mets players, except in the sense that Jerry Seinfeld has his crush on Keith. I do, however, remember that they had pictures in the old Mets yearbooks of a benefit fashion show that the Mets wives used to put on. Nolan Ryan’s wife, as I recall, was pretty hot.
Yes, Vas, here’s to the 2008 Mets, without A-Rod. Let him, for all of his formidable talents, find some other place to screw up chemistry.
I would like to review Dana’s Book for those who have not read it yet. All opinions are my own.
As a long time Mets fan, I eagerly awaited the publishing if Dana’s book Mets Fan. When I bought it at the book signing I couldn’t wait to read it, and after reading it, it was definitely worth the wait.
Most books about teams and or players are usually written by sports writers, or the players themselves. Mets Fan is unique as it is written by a fan. Dana Brand is a long time Mets fan, and his remembrances of the Mets and their history make for fascinating reading. The book is made up of essays starting from Dana’s first recollections of what it was like to root for the Mets and goes up to the 2006 season. I like the fact that it is chronological because the younger fans can get a flavor of what it was like rooting for the team in it’s early years, and can see how really special the ‘69 season was, as well as specific teams and eras. Since the Mets are a fairly young team, Dana can actually say he was there from the beginning. There aren’t too many people who can say they were alive when the Yankees first came into existence!
Since I was also there from the beginning, I appreciated reading about the early years, because there were things about that era that I had forgotten, but every essay will strike a chord with Mets’ fans. Some of my favorite chapters were about Ed Kranepool, the ‘69 Mets, and Frequency & the Mets. Since Dana is an English professor, he has a way with words that make the book an enjoyable and a fast read. It is a great reference book too. When you are watching a Mets’ game and the broadcasters refer to an old time player, or a specific season, you will be able to understand where the reference came from by looking it up in the table of contents. I think this book should be required reading for all of the current Mets’ team as well as those in the minor league system. It might help the rookies or those traded from teams outside of NY get an insight into what constitutes a Mets’ fan. This book is a must for all Mets fans, as well as anyone who has ever been a fan of any sports team. I highly recommend it.
Hi your message is stunning.
I like your blog..
thank you again
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Hey Dr. Brand! I had you for an english class back in my Sophomore year at Hofstra (spring 2001). I wish I had heard about the event at Hofstra when it happened b/c I definitely would have been there! I am happily going to pick up a copy of this and give it a read.
Best of luck to you and Go Mets in ‘08!