Game Time: A Baseball Companion

by Roger Angell

Roger Angell has been writing about baseball for more than forty years . . . and for my money he's the best there is at it," says novelist Richard Ford in his introduction to Game Time. Angell's famous explorations of the summer game are built on acute observation and joyful participation, conveyed in a prose style as admired and envied as Ted Williams's swing. Angell on Fenway Park in September, on Bob Gibson brooding in retirement, on Tom Seaver in mid-windup, on the abysmal early and recent Mets, on a scout at work in backcountry Kentucky, on Pete Rose and Willie Mays and Pedro Martinez, on the astounding Barry Bonds at Pac Bell Park, and more, carry us through the arc of the season with refreshed understanding and pleasure. This collection represents Angell's best writings, from spring training in 1962 to the explosive World Series of 2002.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Essays

398 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Roger 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).

Reviews

[Steve Kettmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, I edited this book, in the sense that I worked with Roger on making the selections, came up with the idea in the first place, conceived the organization, and also did the digging in the New Yorker archives to come up with some older material to include in book form for the first time (a favorite of mine the short piece, new for this book, giving three different takes on Pete Rose). But the writing is all Roger Angell and I think for anyone who has never read him, or just wants to dive back in and enjoy the insight and grace and above all the respect for the reader that jump out of every page, this book is a great place to start.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Angell writes about baseball from the viewpoint of an intelligent fan sitting in the bleachers. This book is a collection of his baseball writing from The New Yorker Magazine and I successfully stretched the essays over an entire summer. What a pleasure!

[Daniel Carrol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this primarily to read 'The Web of the Game' Angell's 1981 account of watching Ron Darling and Frank Viola's pitchers duel in the company of 'the old man to my left' who is revealed to be Red Sox legend and hall of famer Smokey Joe Wood. It might be the best piece of sports writing I've ever read. When I narrated some to my partner she really hit on what makes Roger Angell so special - he writes non-fiction like fiction. And it's this ability to create vivid pictures through literary metaphor that makes him unlike anyone else.

Other stand outs in this book include the profile of Bob Gibson in retirement, how the most feared pitcher alive whose ferocity and exacting standards on the pitch had left him a little adrift in civilian life.

'Jacksonian' the essay on the 1977 World Series and particular Reggie Jackson that includes a turn of phrase that's not left my mind yet.
"The other Reggie came up to bat in the 4th inning (he had walked in the second) and instantly pulled Burt Hooton's first delivery into the right field stands on a low, long parabola, scoring Munson ahead of him and putting the Yankees ahead for the rest of the game and the rest of the year."
It could only be written in a concluding game of a World Series but the simple addition of 'the rest of the year' provides a whole context of finality in 5 words.

'Ninety Feet' the account of the 1991 World Series (Often called the greatest series ever played) and Lonnie Smith's base-running error that cost the Braves the series "The Braves, who had fought a series-long succession of battles up and down the narrow salient between third and home, came up ninety feet short for the year" What a dagger through the heart.

The only reason I didn't give this 5 Stars is that the spring training section is an essay or two too long, spring training by it's very nature is dull and uninteresting compared to the high stakes of playoff baseball, or the human interest of a profile of one of the games' greats.

[Aaron Kleinheksel · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 1st taste of Roger Angell, on recommendation of Tom Verducci. Roger is widely considered to be one of the all-time greats of baseball writing, and after reading this book I understand why.

This book is a collection of Angell's baseball columns through the years (1962 up to 2002). He is 96 years old as of this review and still writing about baseball to the best of my knowledge. His depth and breadth of game knowledge, as well as his skill in writing about it, seem to have only grown over the years, as I notice that the stars I placed next to the essays I wanted to read again in this book seem to be more numerous in the later years. His end-of-season synoptics tend to be my favorite, and if a book could be published that just contained all of those, I would buy it. This book gets 3 stars only because I'd read about 1/3 of the book over again. This happens in an anthology I'm afraid. Some essays are close to 5 stars, others are 2.5-3. I'd rate the entire book a 3.49 on average if I could.

I highly recommend Angell to anyone who loves the game of baseball and who also appreciates the history and nuance of the game through the years.

[Randal · Rating 4 out of 5]

What George Will would be if he could write, or think clearly.
Easily the best of the veteran-baseball-writer-collected-essays subgenre of baseball nonfiction. His long piece on Bob Gibson is almost as good as Gibson's autobiography, Stranger to the Game: the Autobiography of Bob Gibson, which is in turn the best baseball autobiography I have ever read. I have them both as 4.5 star books.
Angell runs a little too nostalgic which holds this back from being 5 stars for me, but he's an astute observer of the game and the world around him, and a fine writer.

[Mark Schultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Game Time: A Baseball Companion, by Roger Angell, 2003. What a great read! Angell’s essays, including a good number that were his annual New Yorker close-of-the-season retrospectives, bring joy, sentiment, and insight in equal quantities. As Richard Ford says in the introduction, Angell’s essays in those years (1962-2002) were the only salve to the baseball fan’s end of the year blues. A wonderful observer, storyteller, and writer, Angell is a true gem of American writing and American sports. Recommended reading!

[Henry Begler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baseball is one of my two or three favorite things in the world. So why does this collection by the universally most acclaimed writer on the subject leave me sort of cold? It’s well-written and perceptive, always ready with a clever or unexpected turn of phrase to balance the workmanlike descriptions. But I think for me, the delights of baseball are so visual and auditory that reading about it produces more of a feeling of dissatisfaction than pleasure. I’m also reading Ulysses and I’ve been thinking how the rhythms of the stream of consciousness of the book are sort of similar to what a transcript of a ballgame on the radio would look like — anecdotes, statistics, conversation, and ephemera punctuated by description, “change-up outside, ball two,” “bounced to short — crawford has it — the throw to first…intime! for the out.” And for me nothing you can write about in nice sentences really matches the richness or poetry of that experience, even though it’s unintentional, or the aesthetic beauty of the game itself.

Sorry to indulge in a corny, grandiose metaphor (something baseball seems to draw out of you even as you try to resist) but your Vin Scullys and Jon Millers really are sort of our modern Homeric bards, the only people left in society who have to use nothing but their voice to captivate for a long stretch. And you can have a wonderful experience with The Odyssey on the page but it won’t be the same as hearing it recited around a fire. Reading about paintings or films can give them a renewed glow and vigor, you are able to see things that you couldn’t see before. But individual baseball games, even the best ones, aren’t masterpieces that you can return to again and again. They’re luminous in the moment and then start to succumb to entropy right after the last out. So when you’re writing about social context, individual players, seasonal narratives and all that, even though that stuff is interesting, in a sense you are writing around The Thing Itself.

(No coincidence here that the best pieces by far were the long profile of Bob Gibson and the one following a scout at work in the Kentucky backwoods, as writing about individuals is much easier than writing about teams. I guess that’s why tennis and boxing routinely produce the greatest sports writing. Baseball has this with pitchers and football with quarterbacks, but it’s not quite the same.)

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend of mine, versed in literature, mentioned Roger Angell as being the best baseball writer of all time. Angell's book, Game Time, confirmed his genius as a voice for America's pastime. Yes, I'm willing to concede that in the U.S.A. football rules as the most popular sport; nonetheless, baseball reins as the most poetic of sports. And Angell's tight prose affirms as much, along with deft insights not only into the mechanics, feats, and nuances of the grand old game, but he also maps the territory of the human heart and spirit that sometimes connects with a thunk of a wooden bat--yet other times flails in defeat. This mighty book covers much ground--like a hawking center fielder--with segments profiling Pete Rose (Charlie Hustle), the Twins versus Braves World Series, and perhaps the best of the stories deals with Bob Gibson and his greatness as a pitcher in juxtaposition of misunderstandings of his character. Gibson endured his country's racism, which shaped him indelibly. Roger Angell doesn't write just about jocks but of humans who happen to be baseball players, though his knowledge of the game is always evident. He is a wordsmith with control of all of his pitches as a writer. I read his book in one day; I couldn't put it down. I recommend it to all baseball fans--whether die hards or novices, this book will speak and expand appreciation to this most American of sports. Here's to boys of summer who have aged into men of records.

[Michael Malone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed a lot of this, especially Angell winding up at a Yale-St. John's game, to interview former Red Sox pitcher Smoky Joe Wood, who went to every Yale game, and ended up witnessing one of the most memorable games in college history, as Ron Darling battled Frank Viola. They both had shutouts for 11 innings, and Darling a no-hitter, and Darling eventually lost. Angell also has interesting observations about his hometown Yankees and Mets, including the Yankees losing the 2001 Series in a stunner, and the Mets going winless at home for a month in 2002. Time spent with Bob Gibson and Ted Williams elicits fascinating profiles.
Angell is a careful observer of the game, and sees many things other folks in the press box do not. His Yale-St. John's story is a testament to the merits of getting in your car, or on a plane, or on your feet, and attending the game, not phoning it in.
I have to admit, I do enjoy his stories as one-offs, every few months in a magazine, as opposed to reading two dozen of them consecutively. But it's a fun summertime read by one of the greatest baseball writers, and possibly the greatest.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This compilation of baseball essays over the course of multiple decades offers insight into one writer’s perspective on the game his loves. From the 1960s to 2002, Angell describes so many different aspects of the game. From Spring Training to the World Series, this compilation covers it all. Some are good, some are not that interesting, but it is a matter of perspective. Still, worth a read for a baseball fan.

[Danaka K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite essay in this book was the one about Bob Gibson. So rarely do writers talk about baseball players as regular human beings with their own quirks and frustrations that are unique to their life outside of MLB, but Roger Angell does it and does it well. I started reading this as soon as the off season started because I knew how much I'd miss baseball. I learned so much about the team I grew up loving, the Giants. Every essay reminded me why I love baseball.

[John Winkelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled eloquent writing and some remarkable stories, this blast from baseball’s immediate past was enjoyable for me. For a casual fan or a younger generation, it probably comes up short. As a Midwestern, I felt its coastal bias, but it did have many references to my hometown Cardinals.
“I don’t think the ordinary person ever gets to do anything they enjoy nearly as much as I enjoyed playing ball,” Bob Gibson

[David Goetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays on Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver were the best, along with Richard Ford's intro. Roger Angell is a fantastic baseball writer with felicitous prose, a keen eye, and an irrepressible love for the game.

[Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Angell was a long-time columnist for the New Yorker and a skilled chronicler of America's favorite pastime. I picked this collection up after I heard he died and enjoyed it. His writing is timeless even if some of the stories of 70s, 80s, and early 90s MLB stars seems a little dated.

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angell is a beautiful writer who carefully balances baseball's mystique with a healthy awareness of the limits of its significance.

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of baseball stories by one of the very best baseball writers. This is one I would read again!

[J.C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars. Very good writing, but sometimes baseball can be kind of boring to read about. The Bob Gibson piece was probably the highlight of the bunch.

[Taylor Gaines · Rating 5 out of 5]

A master

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used this collection to reread some of Angell's older essays - his writing is all excellent, but the pieces published up until 1980 or so are particularly special. Highly recommend!

[Tim Basuino · Rating 5 out of 5]

EDIT:

Just reread this, and am inspired to give it an extra star. Angell respects the game's history without really wallowing in what's different, he recognizes that changes have to be made without going over the top about it. Just a centurion who has loved baseball all his life!

ORIGINAL:
I’ve been reading Roger Angell since high school, many of which I’d read more than once. While baseball writing in general has undergone a shift from general storytelling to deeper analysis, this author has the ability to appeal to almost anybody with a love of America’s greatest sport.

“Game Time” is essentially a greatest hits of his work, so it must have taken some effort to pare down the contenders. We have his 1975 appearance at Candlestick Park with Horace Stoneham, the 1981 college game featuring Frank Viola and Ron Darling but starring Smokey Joe Wood, as well as a lengthy interview with Bob Gibson, to name just a few. One gets the sense that while Angell really loves the sport, he has the ability to write at will about almost anything (although it seems the bulk of his efforts are in fact about the diamond). I especially enjoyed the later additions to this collection, in particular the synopses of the 2001 and 2002 World Series, the latter of course including the infamous Game 6 during which Giants manager Dusty Baker gave starting pitcher Russ Ortiz the game ball.

While many a writer alienates his subjects, Angell got through to almost everybody. I didn’t have the highest opinion of Tim McCarver, but Roger makes him likeable. Nor was I exactly enamored by the likes of Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose, but this writer makes them human. It’s also interesting that the author prefers the sometimes over-grittiness of the Yankee style as contrasted to the alleged goody two shoes characterization the Dodgers want to present themselves as.

Angell is now 97, and ostensibly in good health. To many more quality years Roger!

[Matt Parbs · Rating 2 out of 5]

All anthologies have their problem, especially when it is meant is an umpteenth collection packaged as a greatest hits. An amazing collection of individual essays (even if some are repeats, but in terms of a collection meant to have a natural pace, a narrative, and meant to be read as a whole, the book failed at some level. The Spring training section was way too long, as echoed by Angell's superb ability to set the tone of an article. He astutely pointed out that Spring Training was for writers who needed to test out their narratives and pick their stories... and we are strung through the milieu of Spring Training. Great individual stories but unnecessarily repetitive as spring got close to Summer. My few other problems have nothing to do about the quality of the book but my personal tastes. While individually his pieces work with him at the center, for a whole anthology it became more of a Angell treatise on baseball than what he actually is, getting at the heart of baseball and transcending fanaticism by opening baseball up to anyone with an imagination. I also wouldn't recommend this to anyone looking for a first time introduction to Angell, as he has better. Baseball is fun until it suddenly isn't, and this is how I would read this anthology. When it stops being fun, stop and come back. I tried to read this in one sitting for a book club on facebook. I didn't listen to Angell.

[Billhotto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baseball and good writing go together like a four seam fastball and a sweeping curve ball. No one is better than Roger Angell. Like his stepfather, E.B. White, he can turn a sweet pivot in mid story that makes you see things in an unexpected way. He's a reporter and a fan who never forgets that it's only a game and that the game's the thing. Memory is part of the game. Angell goes back to the days of the Carl Hubbell Giants at the Polo Grounds. The essays were written between 1962 and 2002. My favorite is the description of attending a college game-- Yale and St. John's-- in 1982. With Angell is Smokey Joe Wood: former Red Sox pitcher and the hero of the 1912 World Series. That's right-1912. A nice trip down memory lane, except there's the game itself. Ron Darling for Yale against Frank Viola for St. John. Darling would star for the Mets, Viola would be a Series MVP and Cy Young winner for the Twins.
What happens is incredible, or as Mr. Wood allows, "The most interesting game I've seen in years."

[Edmund · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Baseball this is a must. Roger Angel has witnessed and/or written about baseball since the 30s-40s. His writing is beautiful, expansive, and yet very relaxed-perhaps because he has written mostly for the New Yorker. He's not a chew-em-up and spit-em-out writer like most of the beat baseball writers, and there's not a trace of the smugness of, say, Mike Lupica. In this book, his post career interview with Bob Gibson is a gem. He also has a talent that few baseball writers have--the ability to show that baseball players are sometimes extrememly intelligent and put a lot of thought into a craft that can be as complicated as any.

[Tom Gase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Angell is the best writer ever for baseball...period. This book is another gem and good for people that haven't read his other gems like Season Ticket, Late Innings and Five Seasons (although you should read ALL of them if you're a real fan of Angell). Game Time is sort of a best-of collection of stories for about 1/3 of the book, while new material from the 90's and early part of this past decade take up the other two thirds of the book. Great new stories on the Braves and Yankee teams of the 90's, David Cone, and the Angel 2002 World Series winner. A must-read for all baseball fans, I would give this five stars but I already read a third of this book in other books.

[Ty · Rating 1 out of 5]

While i love books about the history of baseball, i just could not stand this author's writing style. in my opinion, he does not compare to Roger Kahn. the text was very over written and pompous. this may work for a magazine article or a newspaper story, but became very tiresome by about 1/2 way through the book. i almost never abandon a book midway, but
i just gave up after the 2nd week of falling asleep a page or two along.

[Chris Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very solid collection of great columns by Roger Angell. I'm a big Joe Posnanski fan and last Christmas he had posted a list of his all-time favorite sports books. I think I added about 20 of them to my "to read" list and this was one of them.

Highlights for me were the pieces he had done on Bob Gibson and David Cone.

Recommended if you are looking for some baseball reminiscing and enjoy the always-elusive quality sportswriting.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still good. Disappointing to reread some of the essays, even though they're obviously among Angell's best. But they should have organized these collections is a more orderly way, no?

Even within the collection, it's confusing that the essays aren't even chronological within the subjects.

But oh, well. Terrific.

[Agatha Donkar Lund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Particularly lovely: an old essay about watching the 1981 New Haven NCAA regional game between St. Johns and Yale with Smokey Joe Wood; Frank Viola pitched for the Red Storm and Ron Darling for the Elis. Loved that.

[Don LaFountaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for all baseball fans! Roger Angell writes very well, fills his books with so many interesting tidbits about the game, and does it in such a way that you don't want to put the book down! I was a little saddened to have finished it in one day.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, evocative long-form baseball writing. I really enjoy having the ability to pick up a book randomly, and knock out 30 pages of self-contained narrative without having to remember where I left off. "Distance" is one of my favorite articles on an athlete, ever.