Road to Nowhere

The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball

By: Chris Donnelly

Narrated by: Kyle Tait

Road to Nowhere is the story of New York City baseball from 1990 to 1996, describing in intimate detail the collapse of both the Mets and the Yankees in the early nineties, the Yankees' then reclaiming of the city, and the Mets attempts to rebuild from the ashes. After the chaos of the 1980s, the New York Yankees finally bottomed out in 1990. It looked like New York would remain a Mets town well into the twenty-first century.

Without their manic, meddling owner, the Yankees fell into the hands of Gene Michael. Michael made shrewd trades and free agent signings, and he allowed the team's prospects to develop in the Minor Leagues before getting to the Bronx.

Meanwhile, the Mets, beloved for their intensity and hard-partying ways in the 1980s, became everything that had driven fans away from the Yankees. They made bad trades and questionable signings, fired managers seemingly every year, and were a powder keg of controversy. By 1996, despite their record, the Mets were already making moves that would set them on a path to the ultimate showdown with the Yankees.

Road to Nowhere tells the story of how two teams that had swapped roles in the 1980s swapped them right back in the early 1990s.

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