Get Your Tokens Ready - by Chris Donnelly (Hardcover)

About the Book

Get Your Tokens Ready takes a detailed and extensive look at New York City baseball in the late 1990s.

Book Synopsis

Starting with the first ever regular season matchup between the Mets and Yankees and ending with the last out of the 2000 Subway Series, Get Your Tokens Ready provides the most in-depth look ever published at both teams during the late 1990s and the 2000 season.

The 1996 season ended with the Yankees winning their first World Series championship in eighteen years and receiving a grand parade through the streets of the city. The Mets exited the season still struggling to maintain managers and quality players and battling controversy in the clubhouse and off-field.

By 2000, the Yankees, amid baseball's first dynasty in a generation, appeared the undisputed kings of New York with three World Series titles in four seasons. The Mets, however, after years of irrelevance, had rebuilt their team not only to be competitive but to create one dramatic moment after another. Adding to the story were several people who had played or managed for both teams during their careers, most notably Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, and Joe Torre. The result was a golden age of baseball for the city, culminating at long last in the two teams finally battling for New York's baseball soul in the new millennium during the 2000 World Series.

Detailing the moments you remember and some you may have forgotten--from fake mustaches to all-out melees, from wild pitch endings to thrown bat insanity, from heartache to celebration--Get Your Tokens Ready covers it all.

Review Quotes

"I think fans of either team will appreciate Get Your Tokens Ready. Donnelly has written a great book showing how the first Subway Series since 1956 came to be."--Patti Aliventi, thoughtsfromthemountaintop.com

-- (11/18/2025 12:00:00 AM)

"Many of us of a certain age believed we'd never see a Subway Series as our fathers and grandfathers had, and then, amazingly, we did. In the final piece of Chris Donnelly's lyrical trilogy detailing New York's late-century baseball renaissance, he brings us back to those wonderful years when the dream became, first, possible and, ultimately, real. In his hands Get Your Tokens Ready is a masterful story told by a master storyteller."--Mike Vaccaro, sports columnist for the New York Post and author of 1941--The Greatest Year in Sports

"When George Steinbrenner, sports talk radio, and the back pages were king, baseball was at its best. Chris Donnelly masterfully transports us back to one of the wildest rides in the sport's history, when the Mets and Yankees shaped a generation of fans at the center of the baseball universe."--Evan Drellich, senior writer for The Athletic and author of Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess

About the Author

Chris Donnelly is the author of two previous books that take a detailed look at New York City baseball in the late twentieth century: Doc, Donnie, the Kid, and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought for New York's Baseball Soul (Nebraska, 2019) and Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball (Nebraska, 2023).