The Seventh Year Stretch

New York Mets, 1977-1983

By: Greg Prato

Narrated by: Greg Prato

There's no denying that the seven year span between 1977-1983 was one of the darkest in New York Mets history. After all, it was during this time that the team failed to post a single winning season, traded away the most beloved Met of all-time, and took a back seat once again to their crosstown rivals, the Yankees (who were busy winning two World Series). But it was also a time in which quite a few colorful and memorable players donned the Mets uniform, while the Amazins slowly but surely began putting together the "pieces of the puzzle" that would eventually lead to a dramatic World Series win in 1986.

The Seventh Year Stretch: New York Mets, 1977-1983 is the first-ever book to focus solely on this era of the team. Featuring all-new, exclusive interviews with players and those close to the team, the book is a fly-on-the-wall view of what was going on behind the scenes and on the field. Set up in the oral history format, The Seventh Year Stretch reads like a documentary, but in book form.

©2015 Greg Prato Writer, Corp. (P)2021 Greg Prato Writer, Corp.

Interesting material marred by horrific narration.

The book is informative. The narrator (and author) sounds like he's reading from dummy cards.

What a missed opportunity

When you were a kid in school they would sometimes call on some poor kid you was not a good reader to “read aloud to the class” and the poor kid would proceed to read each word with no flow or inflection.
Imagine that and you can conceive of how this book is narrated.
As a Mets fan who’s adolescence were framed by the horrible 1977-1983 7 year “stench” this book should have been a joy — even though these were not great times to be a Muttts fan.
Unfortunately, the work itself is an often an incoherent collection of quotations from the Mets players of the era, thrown haphazardly together in no real logical flow.
The narration just makes a horrific piece of writing even worse by perhaps the worse and impossible to listen to narration since poor Anthony Katz was forced to read Nathaniel Hawthorne aloud in the 9th grade.
I don’t know. Perhaps the worst Era of NY Mets history was Predestined to be covered by such a joke of a piece of work.
I’ll say one thing, this group of Mets players from the era sound as hopelessly inarticulate as they were obviously incompetent on the field!

Worse than the teams it is about.

lThis was not a book it was a series of random blurbs by random ex players and personalities. There was no cohesive thought nor did I learn any real insight. It as if the author started writing a book interviewed players and instead of encapsulating them just published his notes. The constant quoting of players proved distracting and made for an unpleasant listen.