R.I.P. Roger Angell
Re: R.I.P. Roger Angell
I knew you would post about Angell’s passing, Tee. You’ve mentioned (or quoted) him at least a few times over the years. It’s hard to argue that he wasn’t the greatest baseball writer of all time. I like a lot of sports writers but in my mind no one comes anywhere close. Unlike most sports writers, he had the privilege of working for the New Yorker, who gave him enough space to wax poetic about baseball. He was brilliant at capturing its nuances, its humanity, its emotionality (especially its heartbreak), and beautifully expressed what it felt like to be totally captivated by the game. I’m planning to retire later this year and reading some of Angell’s collections is high up on my list of must do’s.
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R.I.P. Roger Angell
He lived an extraordinarily long life, but still it pains me to note the passing of Roger Angell, the finest writer on baseball who has ever lived. For many years, he wrote a New Yorker piece at the end of every season; for me, I never felt the season was officially over until I'd read his summation. What Pauline Kael was to film criticism, he was to sports writing; utterly in his own sphere.
If you love baseball and want to experience seasons of the past told with such freshness it's like you're experiencing them in real time, i couldn't recommend his collections more highly -- The Summer Game, Five Seasons, and Late Innings take you from the early 60s through into the 80s, and exude his enthusiasm for the sport.
He had an elegant prose style -- delicate but tough -- that I suspect was somewhat influenced by his step-father, E.B. White; when I, belatedly, read The Elements of Style a few years ago, I recognized the cadences so familiar to me from Angell's work. He, in turn, has certainly influenced me: I know when I initiate that baseball thread every post-season, I hear his voice in my head, and not infrequently some felicitious phrase comes to me because it feels like the way he might have put it.
There are only a few creative talents in my lifetime who've moved me as much as he did. 101 years is a good long time, but he still feels like he's gone too soon.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/339 ... l-dies-101
If you love baseball and want to experience seasons of the past told with such freshness it's like you're experiencing them in real time, i couldn't recommend his collections more highly -- The Summer Game, Five Seasons, and Late Innings take you from the early 60s through into the 80s, and exude his enthusiasm for the sport.
He had an elegant prose style -- delicate but tough -- that I suspect was somewhat influenced by his step-father, E.B. White; when I, belatedly, read The Elements of Style a few years ago, I recognized the cadences so familiar to me from Angell's work. He, in turn, has certainly influenced me: I know when I initiate that baseball thread every post-season, I hear his voice in my head, and not infrequently some felicitious phrase comes to me because it feels like the way he might have put it.
There are only a few creative talents in my lifetime who've moved me as much as he did. 101 years is a good long time, but he still feels like he's gone too soon.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/339 ... l-dies-101