Thank God it’s Friday .. Roger Angell, the founding author of America’s summer game - baseball.
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This week I wanted to change things up by delving into the archive of someone different, a literary giant, no less. No, please come back, of course, that’s not me! Surely I’m not that pretentious?
I am talking of Roger Angell - the written word creator of America’s summer game — baseball. Although Angell was not merely a sports writer, he was predominately biographed as a preeminent American essayist. Somehow, an essayist reads more significantly than a writer of sports. In any case, I believe Angell to be peerless in both spheres.
Roger Angell’s work created a baseball writing dynasty against which all others are compared, and usually pale. One of his many books — The Summer Game — essentially changed the course of baseball writing forever. Angell discarded the crass nature of reporter style sports writing, instead swapping it for a more thoughtful, elegant, and two-sided view of America’s summer game. His game-day narrative was written through both the lens of an ordinary fan, and that of an educated baseball fanatic. He meandered in and out of the action like childhood sweethearts moving from one to the other, losing you in the mystique of an afternoon at the ballpark, before yanking you back to the nitty-gritty of a critical pitch or play. He was truly a master storyteller, and one that always had his readers on the hook.
Roger Angell died in 2022, at the tender age of a hundred and one. You could say he went the full nine innings, like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter.
His career dates back to 1944, firstly as a New Yorker contributor, before progressing to a fiction writer in 1956. It was an extraordinary career. Later, a pivot to sports writing saw him penning words on all manner of pastimes: tennis, hockey, football, rowing, and horse racing. But, it was baseball where he carved his niche.
On reflection, Angell seemed a particularly modest man. Fortunately, I stumbled upon him in late 2019 and have read him consistently since. His prose mirrors that of the legendary English cricket writers: notably Neville Cardus, who you could say was equally humble in his own way. For the record: Cardus was born in Manchester. And, Angell, New York City.
Arguably Angell’s defining moment was in 2014 — when he received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest honour given to writers by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Although when you peruse his wikipedia page, specifically the references section, you should get a more accurate feeling for the weight of his work.
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I know, in Australia it is Saturday, but Friday is still happening in the U.S. — which is relevant to this post. So, please accept my apologies for the late filing.
I decided on two pieces form the vast library of Roger Angell’s baseball writing. I hope you enjoy them — remember the dates and his age at the time of publishing. I will leave links at the bottom of the post.
By Roger Angell
May 2, 2018 - The New Yorker - Baby Giles
Next-day baseball writers are there to explain or elucidate, but I give up this time. The Yankees’ four-run uprising against the world champion Houston Astros’ reliever Ken Giles ruined a spectacular performance by Houston starter Justin Verlander, who had struck out fourteen batters over eight innings in the so-far-scoreless battle. Verlander had delivered a hundred and one pitches at this point, but why in the world didn’t manager A. J. Hinch send him back out there in the ninth, to see if he might not dismiss the first couple of batters, Aaron Judge and Didi Gregorius, quickly or luckily, and then perhaps give way to the closer?
But no. Giles came in and gave up a single to Judge and a double to Didi. Giancarlo Stanton struck out feebly, bringing up the red-hot Gary Sanchez. A mound conference ensued, and the decision was made—Duh? What! My God!—not to walk him. Sanchez, who had delivered three home runs and six hits over the past seven games, hit Giles’s eleventh pitch four hundred and forty feet into dead center, for three runs, dropping his bat affectionately at his feet before making the tour. Aaron Hicks singled, and Giles was done.
What followed was transfixing, another Never Before, as the stalking-off Giles began punching himself, first in the chest and then in the jaw. The instant image was of a newborn flailing in his crib, and an adult baby, disrespectful of Sanchez and the Yankees and everyone watching. In the dugout, he smashed a bat to the floor and huffily made his departure, but left an image that will last his lifetime.
Six Yankee pitchers delivered thirteen strikeouts of their own and one more zero, bringing the surging Yankees their tenth win in the last eleven games. The two teams will engage again tonight and tomorrow. Part of the fun will be watching Giles on the bench and looking for bruises.
Mr. Angell didn’t suffer cry-babies!
By Roger Angell
November 2, 2017 - The New Yorker - Long Wait, Great Win
Enough already. Enough baseball—bring on the Iditarod or synchronized swimming. Bring back the six-day bike racing. The Houston Astros won their first World Championship last night—their first after fifty-six years’ trying—taking down the Dodgers, 5–1, in L.A., in the seventh and final game of the World Series: a glorious but un-tense finale in which the ’Stros did all their scoring in the first two innings. Astro fans everywhere, including the jam-packed hordes at their home, Minute Maid Park, who were watching on giant television screens, loved every moment of this three-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute trial, but, dutifully sitting by my home set, I longed for the thrilling back-and-forth of the previous six, including even that 13–12, twenty-eight-hit, ten-inning monster of Game Five.
As happens so often in a long series, the joys and triumphs of the winners and their rooters remain pure, while the rest of us, and not only the Dodger fans, try not to think about several inexorable but excruciating failures and pains. We must put aside, for instance, what today must look like for Yu Darvish, last night’s Dodger starter, who was gone after those two innings, and who had lasted for a bare five outs in his Game One start, while coughing up six hits and four runs. Dodger first baseman Cody Bellinger struck out three times last night and seventeen times in the Series, in the end resembling only an embarrassed high-school swinger up there. He set the record for the most strikeouts in the post-season, twenty-nine. Dodger ace Clayton Kershaw pitched four useful innings in a relief role last night but now must ponder his astounding eight homers surrendered in the post-season. Yasiel Puig and his bat, although close, will undergo some counselling this winter. He by turns licks, gnaws, whispers to, and kisses his partner between pitches, but throws her violently to the dirt when she fails him. They probably love each other, but this is an abusive relationship.
There’s a bit of sunshine, however, for the notable Dodger cleanup hitter Justin Turner, who batted .130 for the Series, but perhaps even this afternoon will take himself to the barber, to be shorn of his enormous pinkish-red mane and whiskers, which have grown untouched since some rash vow last spring.
This Astros championship began with fresh ownership and management after 2013 and 2014, when the team suffered more-than-a-hundred-loss seasons. Brilliant draft picks and front-office algorithm strategizing brought us this cast of thrilling newcomers now fixed in our baseball consciousness—the stubby and exuberant José Altuve, with his three successive two-hundred-hit seasons, Series M.V.P. center fielder George Springer, whose five Series home runs tie a record previously shared by Reggie Jackson and Chase Utley, and the tall and athletically eloquent Carlos Correa, among others.
My own happiness at this outcome is centered on some older guys, familiar to me from earlier seasons. I’m thinking about the illustrious Carlos Beltrán, now forty, who has his first Championship ring after nineteen years’ service with six prior teams, including the Yankees and the Mets. I also respect catcher Brian McCann, a former Yankee reliable, and almost forgive his ceaseless high-school-corridor whisperings with his pitchers. Most of all, I’m happy for Justin Verlander, who pitched strongly for the Tigers over thirteen seasons, picking up Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards along the way, before joining the Astros in a last-minute midsummer deal. He went 8–0 for them during the season and won four out of five games with a 2.21 E.R.A. during this year’s post-season. He had played in two prior World Series, but this was his first championship.
Verlander is workmanlike and minimal on the mound, with an intelligent pre-pitch gaze that almost allows us to share the pitch plan and the grip and angle of the ensuing delivery. He accepts the result, good or bad, with a grizzled composure. As the starter (and eventual loser) for the Astros on Saturday, he had struck out seven batters over the first five innings and was protecting a 1–0 lead when he gave up a single to Austin Barnes and then saw a pitch of his nick the next batter, Utley, on the foot, just before the go-ahead single and sac fly that put the Dodgers ahead. He left the mound after an inning-ending strikeout and was gone from the game, but displayed no or few sighings or mutterings on the bench. You take what comes. Now he has played in his first World Series, and it has brought him a Championship ring and a sweet winter off. For the rest of us not in or around Houston, the reward after two thousand four hundred and fifty-eight regular-season games and thirty-eight more in the post-season is a bit more sleep and, for the moment, at least, no more innings.
I wonder what Mr. Angell made of the Astros being latterly exposed as cheats, or not quite playing within the rules. He would have been a stickler, for the rule-book, is my guess.
I love the openings, and closing of his writing. The way he slips in and out of commentary, and colour. One can only hope to be read in the same way; for now, it’s best to read, and enjoy.
References:
https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/roger-angell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Angell
https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/baby-giles
As always, thank you for being here.
Very Cardus like Nick. Most enjoyable