Five Seasons is a great series of essays Angell penned between 1972 and 1977, mostly for the New Yorker. This period, Angell argues, was the most significant half-decade in the game's history. I don't know if he's changed his mind about that claim since the foreword was written, but the pieces in...
I read a few of these essays in The New Yorker, attracted initially because of Angell's essay about E. B. White ("Andy"); I'm interested in all things White. Some of the essays in this collection work really well as literary art--like "Getting There," which involves a description of a round of g...
The Summer Game, Roger Angell’s first book on the sport, changed baseball writing forever. Thoughtful, funny, appreciative of the elegance of the game and the passions invested by players and fans, it goes beyond the usual sports reporter’s beat to examine baseball’s complex place in our American...
The news, which appeared in the Times late last month, was somehow both startling and boring—instant antipodal emotions that only stories about quintuplets or the business side of sports arouse in me. The Times’ account was a blurry, hedging affair, beginning with a denial by the Giants’ front of...