RIP: Roger Angell (and a list of baseball books)
Roger Angell, the famed baseball writer, has passed. It turns out that he is related to our very own James Burrill Angell (after whom Angell Hall is named and the University's Third President). If you can tell me exactly how he is related, I'd be grateful. I figured out they are dependents of Thomas Angell who was one of the four men who spent the winter of 1636 with Roger Williams at Seekonk in the Plymouth Colony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Angell).
And for those of you who are interested in the list of baseball books that I put together, here is the link: https://mgoblog.com/diaries/list-baseball-books
I wisely wrote Deo Volente after saying I would add more (I didn't because things were a bit different in the spring of 2020).
The end of The New York Times obituary has a good quote for baseball fans: "And, he said, he loved the way 'baseball will stick it to you; it means to break your heart.'"
I clicked too quickly to have the link to the articles on his death, so here are two:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33953255/long-new-yorker-writer-editor-roger-angell-dies-101
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/sports/roger-angell-dead.html
and a link to the list of baseball books:
https://mgoblog.com/diaries/list-baseball-books
Also, I guess I should have written descendants, not dependents, of Thomas Angell. Oh well, I ain't a writer.
see your Deo volente and raise you Chorus Angell-orum te suscipiat...
uuugh, my sister was published in one of his books (a poem) and she was the subject of one of the chapters of one of his books.
great baseball guy. sad to hear.
Roger Angell was a DAMN good baseball writer.
ordered The Summer Game as review and description were too good to pass up. My childhood memories when I cared about MLB, the Montreal Expos, Pittsburg Pirates as well as the Tigers
His regular baseball pieces in the New Yorker were what first brought me to that magazine, which eventually became an absolutely necessary part of my life. His writing was just so damned elegant. But that makes it sound ... difficult, as if he wrote only in verse, or in three-syllable words. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead, it was simple, pure, and written with obvious enthusiasm and love for the game and its players. He was the best, full stop.
Agree on all fronts. Loved his writing! Had no idea he was 101! Seems like he was still writing longform pieces into his 80s and 90s. Inspiring.
Good description. He could make my heart pound reading about a game that took place ten years ago, that I had no connection to whatever. I was never even such a big baseball fan, but there was a period when I could not get enough of his books. A great writer, any genre, period.
Lived to 101 - wow! I find this passage from his NY Times obit utterly remarkable:
“I’m not sure there’s ever been a writer so strong, and an editor so important, all at once, at a magazine since the days of H.L. Mencken running The American Mercury,” David Remnick, The New Yorker’s editor, said in an interview for this obituary in 2012.
That means even after his obituary was "pre-written," he ran the bases for another 10 years!
luckily david remnick is still alive or that would have been awkward
haha good point!
Unfortunately I am not familiar with his work but the outpouring of remembrances is striking. I'll have to look into his writing.
His annual year-end poems in The New Yorker were special. This is how his final one from December 2009 began:
Good neighbors, hi—but O.M.G.,
The time’s at hand again, I see,
To cobble up these Christmas lieder,
Fit for friend or distant reader.
Our deadline’s near, so off we go,
Ignoring tweets and vertigo,
Counting beats and storing linage,
Melding Keats and major signage:
Names and rhymes and scenes of winter,
Parties, Magi—hit the printer!