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Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader
The most celebrated baseball writer of our time has selected his favorite pieces from the last forty years to create Once More Around the Park, a definitive volume of his most memorable work. Mr. Angell includes writing never previously collected as well as selections from The Summer Game, Five Seasons, Late Innings, and Season Ticket. He brings back the extraordinary games, innings and performances that he has witnessed and written about so astutely and gracefully—“The Interior Stadium,” on the complex attractions of baseball; “In the Country,” on a friendship that began with a fan letter and took him far from the big stadiums and big money; “The Arm Talks,” on contemporary pitching strategy and the arrival of the split-finger delivery; and many others. Mr. Angell's conversations with past and present players and managers, scouts and coaches, rookies and Hall of Famers enhance his own expertise and critical appreciation, which define him as the game's most useful and ardent fan. “Angell resembles a pitcher with pinpoint control. As a chronicler of the game, he's in a class with Ring Lardner and Red Smith.”—Newsweek. “Angell's perceptions are fresh, vivid, and uncannily accurate.... Only a fan who cares this much could observe so carefully and write so eloquently.”—San Francisco Chronicle.
“A triumph of art and grace.”—Chicago Tribune Book World. "In the course of a well-lived century, he established himself as. . .baseball's finest, fondest chronicler." —The New Yorker
“A triumph of art and grace.”—Chicago Tribune Book World. "In the course of a well-lived century, he established himself as. . .baseball's finest, fondest chronicler." —The New Yorker
366 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
12 people are currently reading
249 people want to read
About the author
Roger Angell
55 books116 followersRoger Angell (b. 1920) is a celebrated New Yorker writer and editor. First published in the magazine in 1944, he became a fiction editor and regular contributor in 1956; and remains as a senior editor and staff writer. In addition to seven classic books on baseball, which include The Summer Game (1972), Five Seasons (1977), and Season Ticket (1988), he has written works of fiction, humor, and a memoir, Let Me Finish (2006).
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 2, 2023
MFK Fisher said that when she was writing about food and the hunger for it, “I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
There is a reason baseball lends itself to writing. John Updike turned Ted Williams’ last game into craft, Roger Kahn turned one team into meditations on time, and Roger Angell just turned eloquent love into honest words. I think the reason baseball books are literature and books on other sports are meaty word salads has much to do with the character of baseball itself—it’s a game that has grown around the idea of failure, played out over time among a group dedicated to each others success.
And yet, when they write about baseball, they are writing about the way something you love (or just pay attention to) folds itself into your life, how you see your reality reflected there and vice versa. They’re writing about families, frail humanity, fallen humanity, and a nice summer evening. Literature is at its best there.
There is a reason baseball lends itself to writing. John Updike turned Ted Williams’ last game into craft, Roger Kahn turned one team into meditations on time, and Roger Angell just turned eloquent love into honest words. I think the reason baseball books are literature and books on other sports are meaty word salads has much to do with the character of baseball itself—it’s a game that has grown around the idea of failure, played out over time among a group dedicated to each others success.
And yet, when they write about baseball, they are writing about the way something you love (or just pay attention to) folds itself into your life, how you see your reality reflected there and vice versa. They’re writing about families, frail humanity, fallen humanity, and a nice summer evening. Literature is at its best there.
October 23, 2014
I can't say enough good things about Roger Angell's writings about baseball. I wish I could find a book by him of essays about more recent players and events.
"The pennant-clinching celebrations in Boston were happy indeed…but the excruciating prolongation and eventual exultation of the Mets' Game Six were something altogether different - a great public event, on the order of a blackout or an armistice. The game began at 3:06, New York time, and ended at 7:48, and in that stretch millions of Mets fans in and around New York, caught between their daywatch of the game and some other place they had to be, found themselves suspended in baseball's clockless limbo, in a vast, mobile party of anxious watching and listening and sudden release. Sports can bring no greater reward than this, I think. In time, I - like many others, I imagine - began to collect Game Six stories: where folks had been that night, and what they had seen and heard and done during the long game's journey into night. There was no rush hour in New York that evening. I kept hearing: so many office workers stayed in their offices to follow the game that the buses and avenues in midtown looked half empty. Subway riders on the I.R.T. platform at Grand Central heard the score and the inning over the train announcer's loudspeaker. A man I know who was in bed with the flu or something said that he rose to a sitting position during the Mets' rally in the ninth, and then left his bed and paced the floor; when it was all over, he got up and got dressed and was cured. Another man, a film editor - not at all a fan - was running around the Central Park Reservoir when a strange, all-surrounding noise stopped him in his tracks. It came from everywhere around the Park, he said, and it wasn't a shout or a roar but something closer to a sudden great murmuring of the city: the Mets had won. Men and women on commuter trains followed the news by Panasonic of Sony, clustering around each radio set for the count and the pitch, and calling the outs and the base runners to the others in their car. At the Hartsdale platform, in Westchester, a woman with a Walkman, having said goodbye to other alighting commuters as they hurried off to their car radios, started up a stairway and then stopped and cried "Oh!" Her companions from the train stared up at her, stricken, and she said, "Gary got thrown out, stealing." There were portables and radios at Lincoln Center, too, where the ticket holders at the Metropolitan Opera's performance of "The Marriage of Figaro" reluctantly gave the game up at seven-thirty and went in and took their seats for the overture. After a moment or two, a man in the orchestra section sprang up and disappeared through a side exit; he slipped back in a few minutes later (he'd found someone in the cloakroom with a radio, he subsequently explained) and, resuming his seat at the beginning of Figaro and Susanna's opening duet, turned and signaled, "Seven-four in the sixteenth!" on his fingers to the rows around him, and then did a thumbs-up to show he meant the Mets. A newspaperman heading back home to new York stopped off in an airport bar at Boston's Logan Airport, where the game was on, and fell into Mets conversation there with a woman who turned out to be a Merrill Lynch investment broker; they missed the three-o'clock, the four-o'clock, and the five-o'clock Eastern shuttles, somehow tore themselves away for the six-o'clock - and discovered that the game was still on when they deplaned at La Guardia. A colleague of mine who lives in New Jersey said that while going home he'd followed the game by stages over a spontaneous electronic relay network that had sprung up along the way - a TV set in the fire station on Forty-third Street, a wino's radio in Grace Plaza, a bit TV in the window of a video store on Sixth Avenue, some kids with a boom box in the doorway of a Spanish deli, and then a crowd-encircled gray stretch limo parked in Herald Square, with its doors open and the windows rolled down and, within a flickering tiny television set turned to the game. Radios on his PATH train went blank during the journey under the Hudson but they came back to life in the Hoboken station, where he changed to a New Jersey Transit train, and where the Astros retied the game in the fourteenth. A frightful communications disaster - the long tunnel just before the Meadowlands - was averted when his train, a rolling grandstand, unexpectedly ground to a halt (Signal difficulties," a conductor announced), and stood there right through the top of the sixteenth, when the Mets scored three and service resumed. Not So, Boston 1986"
"The lesser wonders of baseball - the sacrifice fly, the three-six-three double play, the wrong-side hit-and-run bouncer through a vacated infield sector, the right-field-to-third-base peg that cuts down a lead runner, the extended turn at bat against an obdurate pitcher that ends with a crucial single squiggled through the middle - are most appreciated by the experienced fan, who may in time also come to understand that expertise is the best defense against partisanship. This game can break your heart. No other sport elucidates failure so plainly (no other sport comes close), or presents it in such painful and unexpected variety."
"The pennant-clinching celebrations in Boston were happy indeed…but the excruciating prolongation and eventual exultation of the Mets' Game Six were something altogether different - a great public event, on the order of a blackout or an armistice. The game began at 3:06, New York time, and ended at 7:48, and in that stretch millions of Mets fans in and around New York, caught between their daywatch of the game and some other place they had to be, found themselves suspended in baseball's clockless limbo, in a vast, mobile party of anxious watching and listening and sudden release. Sports can bring no greater reward than this, I think. In time, I - like many others, I imagine - began to collect Game Six stories: where folks had been that night, and what they had seen and heard and done during the long game's journey into night. There was no rush hour in New York that evening. I kept hearing: so many office workers stayed in their offices to follow the game that the buses and avenues in midtown looked half empty. Subway riders on the I.R.T. platform at Grand Central heard the score and the inning over the train announcer's loudspeaker. A man I know who was in bed with the flu or something said that he rose to a sitting position during the Mets' rally in the ninth, and then left his bed and paced the floor; when it was all over, he got up and got dressed and was cured. Another man, a film editor - not at all a fan - was running around the Central Park Reservoir when a strange, all-surrounding noise stopped him in his tracks. It came from everywhere around the Park, he said, and it wasn't a shout or a roar but something closer to a sudden great murmuring of the city: the Mets had won. Men and women on commuter trains followed the news by Panasonic of Sony, clustering around each radio set for the count and the pitch, and calling the outs and the base runners to the others in their car. At the Hartsdale platform, in Westchester, a woman with a Walkman, having said goodbye to other alighting commuters as they hurried off to their car radios, started up a stairway and then stopped and cried "Oh!" Her companions from the train stared up at her, stricken, and she said, "Gary got thrown out, stealing." There were portables and radios at Lincoln Center, too, where the ticket holders at the Metropolitan Opera's performance of "The Marriage of Figaro" reluctantly gave the game up at seven-thirty and went in and took their seats for the overture. After a moment or two, a man in the orchestra section sprang up and disappeared through a side exit; he slipped back in a few minutes later (he'd found someone in the cloakroom with a radio, he subsequently explained) and, resuming his seat at the beginning of Figaro and Susanna's opening duet, turned and signaled, "Seven-four in the sixteenth!" on his fingers to the rows around him, and then did a thumbs-up to show he meant the Mets. A newspaperman heading back home to new York stopped off in an airport bar at Boston's Logan Airport, where the game was on, and fell into Mets conversation there with a woman who turned out to be a Merrill Lynch investment broker; they missed the three-o'clock, the four-o'clock, and the five-o'clock Eastern shuttles, somehow tore themselves away for the six-o'clock - and discovered that the game was still on when they deplaned at La Guardia. A colleague of mine who lives in New Jersey said that while going home he'd followed the game by stages over a spontaneous electronic relay network that had sprung up along the way - a TV set in the fire station on Forty-third Street, a wino's radio in Grace Plaza, a bit TV in the window of a video store on Sixth Avenue, some kids with a boom box in the doorway of a Spanish deli, and then a crowd-encircled gray stretch limo parked in Herald Square, with its doors open and the windows rolled down and, within a flickering tiny television set turned to the game. Radios on his PATH train went blank during the journey under the Hudson but they came back to life in the Hoboken station, where he changed to a New Jersey Transit train, and where the Astros retied the game in the fourteenth. A frightful communications disaster - the long tunnel just before the Meadowlands - was averted when his train, a rolling grandstand, unexpectedly ground to a halt (Signal difficulties," a conductor announced), and stood there right through the top of the sixteenth, when the Mets scored three and service resumed. Not So, Boston 1986"
"The lesser wonders of baseball - the sacrifice fly, the three-six-three double play, the wrong-side hit-and-run bouncer through a vacated infield sector, the right-field-to-third-base peg that cuts down a lead runner, the extended turn at bat against an obdurate pitcher that ends with a crucial single squiggled through the middle - are most appreciated by the experienced fan, who may in time also come to understand that expertise is the best defense against partisanship. This game can break your heart. No other sport elucidates failure so plainly (no other sport comes close), or presents it in such painful and unexpected variety."
February 2, 2025
Mostly a "best of" from previous five-year volumes, with a few added essays and some slightly trimmed to a better length. One favorite was the discussion with NL President A. Bartlett Giamatti.
This has been a yearly tradition, and Roger Angell will be a tough one to replace in the lineup.
PS definitely recommended for the serious baseball fan
This has been a yearly tradition, and Roger Angell will be a tough one to replace in the lineup.
PS definitely recommended for the serious baseball fan
June 26, 2022
The essays here cover several of Angell’s most famous books - and many edited down from the originals. This abridgment is helpful, like easy mode or training wheels since he describes a sport and a culture that is so far gone that I suspect most of us have almost happily forgotten it, and it takes effort (for me) to re-engage with baseball in any real way. For all the four stars, it is more for the reminiscing and the fun compare-and-contrast to today — than any sort of recommendation for the general public.
June 22, 2021
If you love baseball but haven't been introduced to Roger Angell, don't waste another day getting your hands on "Once More Around the Park," or another of his books on baseball. Nobody exceeds him as a chronicler of our national pastime. He writes about the game with knowledge, of course, but also with an affection that comes through page after page. I became acquainted with his baseball writing when he wrote two or three articles a year for The New Yorker, some time ago. These always included a retrospective on the World Series. How well I remember looking forward to these pieces, and he never let me down. Now baseball is quirky, isn't it? The team without the ball is on offense. It's nine guys against one. A game tied after regulation could go on unto eternity, theoretically, since the clock isn't a factor. You can express your dissatisfaction with the umpire to your heart's content. Perhaps above all, no matter how much they monkey with the game (and new rules this year are a good example), a baseball game is going to mosey along for about 2 1/2 hours regardless, so you can dependably grab yourself a cold one, kick your shoes off and put your feet up on the coffee table, and forget the world for awhile. Mr. Angell, amazingly, is still living. He's a centenarian! Bless his soul. I hope my memory hasn't failed me with the quote I am about to use. Baseball gives rise to memorable quotes, doesn't it? "Nice guys finish last." "There's no crying in baseball." "In baseball, you don't know nuthin'." Let me set the stage. It's Oct. 26, 2002. Anaheim, California. Giants versus Angels. The Giants have a 3-2 advantage in games. It's bottom of the 7th. Giants 5 Angels 0. The Giants are nine outs away from their first championship since relocating from NY to San Francisco in the late 1950's. By all rights, this should be a safe lead. You can almost taste the anticipation in the air, at the stadium, and in countless hearts up the road. This is it! We're going to win at last! Not so fast. The Angels get three in the seventh, three more in the eighth. The Giants are the walking dead. They lose the game and the game the next day. In his annual retrospective, Roger Angell remarks, "Baseball is fun, until suddenly it isn't." Such a good line. My apologies, Mr. Angell, to you, if you didn't say this, and to the person who did. But somehow, I think I got it right. I conclude with a line from Ernie Banks, the irrepressible infielder for the Cubs, long ago. He loved playing the game so much, he said on one occasion, "It's a great day for a ballgame, let's play two!"
January 8, 2025
Avid readers of baseball books are familiar with Roger Angell’s work. His prose on the game has entertained and informed thousands of readers through the years and while he may no longer be with us, his work is still a treat to read – even if it has been previously read. This book, a collection of his work in other publications or books that covers approximately 40 years of the sport, is a treat to any baseball fan or reader.
Just like his other books like “Late Innings” or “Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion”, this collection covers a wide variety of topics about baseball and the stories range from humorous to “just the facts” to touching. If I had to select just a couple of the chapters that I would pick out as the best, one would have to include “In the Country” where Angell took a letter he received from a wife of a pitcher trying to make it in the low minors into a touching love story – not just of the game but also of the couple. Then the next chapter, “In the Fire”, brings the reader into the world of the catcher with insight into that unique position. There are so many more aspects that a catcher has to consider than what is usually available to the fans in stands or watching on TV. Such as where to position themselves for a pitch, how to maneuver to make that throw to second base or communicating to fielders on where to position themselves, this chapter is written so well and has contributions from many star catchers from the late 1970s and early 1980s such as Carlton Fisk, Ted Simmons and Bob Boone.
I’ll use the catcher chapter to illustrate one more aspect of the book I really liked and that is while the material is about players and events from several decades ago, there are so many of Angell’s observations that could be applicable today. The example I’ll use is for catchers who have been named the Most Valuable Player in their league. He makes the point that only those catchers who have “startling offensive figures” win this award and he gives examples like Johnny Bench, Gabby Harnett and Ernie Lombardi. I noted that this is still true today, with the most recent MVP catcher, Joe Mauer, also putting up incredible hitting statistics in his MVP year but no mention of defense or any other aspect of his game. I wrote the note in the book and I did that over 40 times for other items. To me, that shows that even though the game may have changed a lot since Angell wrote his words, they are still applicable, true and wonderful to read even today.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
Just like his other books like “Late Innings” or “Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion”, this collection covers a wide variety of topics about baseball and the stories range from humorous to “just the facts” to touching. If I had to select just a couple of the chapters that I would pick out as the best, one would have to include “In the Country” where Angell took a letter he received from a wife of a pitcher trying to make it in the low minors into a touching love story – not just of the game but also of the couple. Then the next chapter, “In the Fire”, brings the reader into the world of the catcher with insight into that unique position. There are so many more aspects that a catcher has to consider than what is usually available to the fans in stands or watching on TV. Such as where to position themselves for a pitch, how to maneuver to make that throw to second base or communicating to fielders on where to position themselves, this chapter is written so well and has contributions from many star catchers from the late 1970s and early 1980s such as Carlton Fisk, Ted Simmons and Bob Boone.
I’ll use the catcher chapter to illustrate one more aspect of the book I really liked and that is while the material is about players and events from several decades ago, there are so many of Angell’s observations that could be applicable today. The example I’ll use is for catchers who have been named the Most Valuable Player in their league. He makes the point that only those catchers who have “startling offensive figures” win this award and he gives examples like Johnny Bench, Gabby Harnett and Ernie Lombardi. I noted that this is still true today, with the most recent MVP catcher, Joe Mauer, also putting up incredible hitting statistics in his MVP year but no mention of defense or any other aspect of his game. I wrote the note in the book and I did that over 40 times for other items. To me, that shows that even though the game may have changed a lot since Angell wrote his words, they are still applicable, true and wonderful to read even today.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
January 17, 2018
He writes beautifully about the sport. Many of the essays are memorable, including ones about Joe Wood in old age (The Web of the Game), about a low minor league pitcher and his wife (In the Country), and others about catchers, baseball movies, etc.
June 2, 2025
Read this book for a Literature in Baseball class. A fine collection of the writings of Roger Angell. Class ic baseball coverage from the 60s and 70s. Perhaps most interesting is viewing those events with the mindset of reading with a 50 year old mindset.
February 11, 2023
Some really strong essays in here, especially Web of the Game and In the Country.
June 23, 2015
I've given this book 5 stars primarily because it is a book about baseball, a sport that can only rank 5 stars out of 5. Angell explains why in the final chapter of the book. Angell's writing enhances the enjoyment of the game, and yet, baseball is the one game that does not need any outside help.
Despite the perfect rating, I found the book far from perfect, but that opinion can hardly be objective. Angell admitted that he has written more about the Mets and Red Sox than about all the other MLB teams combined. That is reflected in this book, which contains a long and (for me)painful rundown of the 1969 World Series. I take exception to Angell's assessment of the '69 Mets. Angell takes the popular high road, in which the big bad Birds took on the pitiful 1962 Mets, making the Mets' triumph over the Orioles more miraculous than it really was. While they may have had more than their share of luck, (a word Branch Rickey said does not belong in the baseball lexicon), the Mets did win 100 games during the regular season. Bad teams, no matter how lucky, do not win 100 games in a season. But such is the nature of most of us. We berate our own teams to make their victories appear more glorious.
Angell's reviews of baseball movies made me almost feel sorry for him, for he seemed to deny himself the opportunity to be entertained because he had problems with the baseball in the pictures. PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, one of those on his THUMBS DOWN list, featured an actor, Gary Cooper, who couldn't play the game. But for me, it's OK, because PRIDE is not a baseball movie but a love story with baseball as a main component. I join Angell, in part, concerning THE NATURAL. I wince every time I see Fowler pitch from the windup with a man on first. But I love watching Robert Redford, wearing number 9, swing like I imagine Ted Williams did. (one of my great regrets in baseball is that I never saw Williams play, the only chance being rained out in Baltimore.) Both movies are sappy, with issues for the baseball purist, but I love them, as I do FIELD OF DREAMS. On October 6, 1991, after the Detroit Tigers had hammered the Orioles in the final game of the season, the final baseball game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the booming voice of James Earl Jones, from that movie, was heard over the PA system, speaking of THIS GAME, THIS FIELD. There was hardly a dry eye in the place. BTW, did you notice in FIELD that the bottom line for Moonlight Graham was nearly the same on that FIELD as it was for McGraw's Giants: no at bats.
There is much I loved about the book and much I learned about baseball. That is one of the great things about the game: there is always something to learn. And Angell subtly makes a point that most observers (but not fans) of the game would dispute: Baseball is not a children's game played by adults; it is an adult game because only adults, very talented adults, can play it properly and to full effect.
Finally, there was a wonderful chapter in which Angell and then president of the National League, Bart Giamatti, attend a Mets game together. Giamatti is a year away from becoming Commissioner of Baseball and tragically, a year away from death. Angell does not mention him when writing about the problems of Pete Rose, who was given a lifetime suspension from the game by Giamatti. The day prior to the writing of this review, in a report from ESPN, we had learned that Rose, contrary to all he had said over the years, had indeed bet on Reds' games while he was a player. Giamatti is quoted by Angell as saying that Rose was a great man. The scandal that broke at the dawn of Giamatti's baseball reign is what surely killed him as much as his weight and smoking. I do not look upon Rose's banishment as a tragedy; neither did Angell. The tragedy was that baseball was deprived of a gracious, eloquent man for far too many years. Fortunately, we cannot same the same for Roger Angell, who is still with us at age 95.
Despite the perfect rating, I found the book far from perfect, but that opinion can hardly be objective. Angell admitted that he has written more about the Mets and Red Sox than about all the other MLB teams combined. That is reflected in this book, which contains a long and (for me)painful rundown of the 1969 World Series. I take exception to Angell's assessment of the '69 Mets. Angell takes the popular high road, in which the big bad Birds took on the pitiful 1962 Mets, making the Mets' triumph over the Orioles more miraculous than it really was. While they may have had more than their share of luck, (a word Branch Rickey said does not belong in the baseball lexicon), the Mets did win 100 games during the regular season. Bad teams, no matter how lucky, do not win 100 games in a season. But such is the nature of most of us. We berate our own teams to make their victories appear more glorious.
Angell's reviews of baseball movies made me almost feel sorry for him, for he seemed to deny himself the opportunity to be entertained because he had problems with the baseball in the pictures. PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, one of those on his THUMBS DOWN list, featured an actor, Gary Cooper, who couldn't play the game. But for me, it's OK, because PRIDE is not a baseball movie but a love story with baseball as a main component. I join Angell, in part, concerning THE NATURAL. I wince every time I see Fowler pitch from the windup with a man on first. But I love watching Robert Redford, wearing number 9, swing like I imagine Ted Williams did. (one of my great regrets in baseball is that I never saw Williams play, the only chance being rained out in Baltimore.) Both movies are sappy, with issues for the baseball purist, but I love them, as I do FIELD OF DREAMS. On October 6, 1991, after the Detroit Tigers had hammered the Orioles in the final game of the season, the final baseball game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the booming voice of James Earl Jones, from that movie, was heard over the PA system, speaking of THIS GAME, THIS FIELD. There was hardly a dry eye in the place. BTW, did you notice in FIELD that the bottom line for Moonlight Graham was nearly the same on that FIELD as it was for McGraw's Giants: no at bats.
There is much I loved about the book and much I learned about baseball. That is one of the great things about the game: there is always something to learn. And Angell subtly makes a point that most observers (but not fans) of the game would dispute: Baseball is not a children's game played by adults; it is an adult game because only adults, very talented adults, can play it properly and to full effect.
Finally, there was a wonderful chapter in which Angell and then president of the National League, Bart Giamatti, attend a Mets game together. Giamatti is a year away from becoming Commissioner of Baseball and tragically, a year away from death. Angell does not mention him when writing about the problems of Pete Rose, who was given a lifetime suspension from the game by Giamatti. The day prior to the writing of this review, in a report from ESPN, we had learned that Rose, contrary to all he had said over the years, had indeed bet on Reds' games while he was a player. Giamatti is quoted by Angell as saying that Rose was a great man. The scandal that broke at the dawn of Giamatti's baseball reign is what surely killed him as much as his weight and smoking. I do not look upon Rose's banishment as a tragedy; neither did Angell. The tragedy was that baseball was deprived of a gracious, eloquent man for far too many years. Fortunately, we cannot same the same for Roger Angell, who is still with us at age 95.
April 4, 2015
Roger Angell is a classy writer. Someone you enjoy reading for the writing as well as the story. These essays are selected from a few collections of his baseball writing from over about 30 years, starting in the early 1960's and extending to 1991. Although I have been a baseball fan since I was young (starting around 1962), there is a big gap from about 1972 when I left home until 1991 when I was separated, during which I really did not follow baseball. The baseball season of 1991, along with (re-)acquainting myself with the music of Bob Dylan at that same time, kept me going after my separation. And then eventually marrying a woman who is a baseball fan, I have been back as a fan for a long time now. So the vast majority of these essays cover seasons and players that I did not follow. But still the writing and his knowledge kept me interested. The 2015 regular season starts tomorrow, so this collection served its purpose of getting me warmed up for the season.
November 15, 2020
Finally got around to a Roger Angell book. So far, great. Love his way of describing the game. It really is different that the other major team sports in the way fans absorb the games/seasons.
Thanks to Susan Slusser to pointing me to Angell. Love finding new books from another book.
Just read the chapter about the 69 Mets. I of course had heard of the Miracle Mets before, but this summary was great. Nolan Ryan? - I think I knew he was on this team. Earl Weaver's quote after losing the WS is spot on. Wish my team someday soon has a miracle season. In my 20+ years of the A's being my team, there have been some good moments, but if they go over the top, their story will last in a different way.
Angell does use the term "Grand Slam Home Run" - which thanks to Bill King, I question!
Thanks to Susan Slusser to pointing me to Angell. Love finding new books from another book.
Just read the chapter about the 69 Mets. I of course had heard of the Miracle Mets before, but this summary was great. Nolan Ryan? - I think I knew he was on this team. Earl Weaver's quote after losing the WS is spot on. Wish my team someday soon has a miracle season. In my 20+ years of the A's being my team, there have been some good moments, but if they go over the top, their story will last in a different way.
Angell does use the term "Grand Slam Home Run" - which thanks to Bill King, I question!
March 26, 2013
I did not know this was a collection of writings published in other books. I may have skipped it because I already read "The Summer Game," from which some of the material is drawn.
It starts to feel a little repetitive toward two-thirds of the way in as this book includes many of Angell's year-end wrapups in which he expresses joy at the year that passed and focuses on the drama at the World Series.
But there's probably no better writer about baseball fiction or non- than Angell.
It starts to feel a little repetitive toward two-thirds of the way in as this book includes many of Angell's year-end wrapups in which he expresses joy at the year that passed and focuses on the drama at the World Series.
But there's probably no better writer about baseball fiction or non- than Angell.
February 23, 2012
Read the "Not so Boston" chapter then tell me what you think about Bill Buckner.
Best quote: "It's baseball, and we've got to live with it," Dave Henderson.
Best quote: "It's baseball, and we've got to live with it," Dave Henderson.
March 23, 2013
I skimmed it a bit, some of the essays I had read before in other collections. I prefer his 80s writing, when he got more into strategy and talking specifics with pitchers and catchers.
July 14, 2022
An anthology of sorts with essays from Angell's previous books.
December 12, 2015
baseball defined>>"There are easy days and lesser rewards for every fan, of course, but losing, rather than winning, is what baseball is about, and why, in the end,it is a game for adults."
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews