Roger Angell
Roger Angell, born on September 19, 1920, in New York City, is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball writers in history. His writing is characterized by a focus on the fans of the game, delivering elegant prose that captures their experiences and emotions. With a background shaped by notable influences, including his stepfather E. B. White, Angell developed a passion for baseball early in life, attending games and following them on the radio. After serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, he began a career in journalism that included a significant tenure at The New Yorker, where he contributed to both sports and literature.
Angell's foray into baseball writing began in the 1960s, leading to the publication of several best-selling collections, including "The Summer Game" and "Game Time." He often approached the game from the perspective of a fan rather than a sports insider, choosing to sit among the crowd rather than in the press box, which allowed him to convey the unique relationship between players and spectators. His work has earned numerous accolades, including the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award and the J. G. Taylor Spink Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Beyond baseball, Angell also showcased his versatility in writing personal essays and fiction, reflecting on a wide range of topics in his later years.
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Roger Angell
Writer
- Born: September 19, 1920
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: May 20, 2022
- Place of death: Manhattan, New York, NY
Biography
Roger Angell, who many consider the best baseball writer in the history of the game, put his love of baseball into elegant prose pieces that most often focus on the fans, that indispensable group of people usually neglected by sportswriters. Angell was born on September 19, 1920, in New York City. His father was a lawyer and his mother was one of the first editors of The New Yorker magazine. His stepfather was renowned writer E. B. White, who had a profound influence on his writing.
Baseball was an early passion for Angell, who went to games with his father and listened to them on the radio even before he was a teenager. In 1942, he graduated from Harvard University with a BA and then spent four years in the United States Army Air Force. Stationed in the Pacific, he was managing editor of Brief, the Air Force’s weekly magazine. When his military service was completed, he returned to New York City in 1946 to work for Curtis Publishing Company’s new monthly magazine, Holiday; he was the magazine’s senior editor from 1947 to 1958. By 1955 he also was working as an editor and contributor for The New Yorker.
Angell initially wrote personal narratives and short fictional pieces. He began writing about baseball in 1962, when The New Yorker assigned him a piece on spring training at baseball camps in Florida. He subsequently wrote many further baseball articles for The New Yorker and other publications. His articles have been collected in several best-selling books, including The Summer Game (1972), Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader (1991), and Game Time: A Baseball Companion (2003). He also appeared as a commentator in the documentary series Baseball (1994) directed by Ken Burns. With A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone (2001) he prepared an in-depth biography. His own memoir, Let Me Finish, was published in 2006.
Angell did not view himself as a baseball insider but rather as a reporter who knows the game, as a fan who has met and talked with the players over the years, and as a reporter who wants to take his readers to the games so they can experience them as he and the other fans at the park do. For many years he chose not to watch games from the press box but sat in the stands among the crowd; this enabled him to write from the perspective of just another one of the fans, albeit one with a solid knowledge of the game, and to describe the reciprocal relationship of players and spectators. Angell’s essays have been described as having a poetic turn of phrase—even leading some to declare him baseball's poet laureate—but he consistently denied any attempt to be poetic. He said that he saw a similarity between baseball and reading because both can have a good beginning that leads to an unsatisfying finish or a boring beginning that leads to an exciting, spectacular ending. Both baseball and reading, he added, are for people who do not mind being bored.
In addition to writing regular articles for The New Yorker on baseball, other sports, and various other subjects, Angell also worked in other capacities for the magazine, including a lengthy stint as its chief fiction editor. In that capacity he worked with such prominent authors as John Updike, Garrison Keillor, and Woody Allen. He also wrote the publication's annual Christmas poem for many years. In 2005, Angell received the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement for his "lyrical sportswriting" and for "nurturing literary excellence" as a fiction editor. He was the first-ever recipient of the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing in 2011 and was presented with the National Baseball Hall of Fame's highest honor for writers, the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, in 2014, among many other accolades and awards. His popular New Yorker essay on life in his nineties, "This Old Man," was published in 2014 and won the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism the following year. It was anthologized along with other writings in This Old Man: All in Pieces (2015).
Angell married Evelyn Baker in 1942 and the couple had two daughters, Alice and Caroline, known as Callie. They divorced after over twenty years of marriage and in 1963 Angell married Carol Rogge, with whom he had a son, John Henry. In "This Old Man" he showed his ability to write personally on a diverse range of subjects outside of baseball, including his wife's death from cancer in 2012 and the 2010 suicide of Callie, who was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Bibliography
Angell, Roger. "This Old Man." New Yorker. Condé Nast, 24 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
"Contributors: Roger Angell." New Yorker. Condé Nast, 2016. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
"Guide to the Roger Angell Papers: Biography." National Baseball Hall of Fame. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, 2016. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Treder, Steve. "Roger Angell." Society for American Baseball Research. SABR, 15 May 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Verducci, Tom. "The Passion of Roger Angell: The Best Baseball Writer in America is Also a Fan." Sports Illustrated. Time, 23 July 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.