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The Summer Game
“Page for page, The Summer Game contains not only the classiest but also the most resourceful baseball writing I have ever read.” —New York Times Book Review The Summer Game , Roger Angell’s first book on the sport, changed baseball writing forever. Thoughtful, funny, appreciative of the elegance of the game and the passions invested by players and fans, it goes beyond the usual sports reporter’s beat to examine baseball’s complex place in our American psyche. Between the miseries of the 1962 expansion Mets and a classic 1971 World Series between the Pirates and the Orioles, Angell finds baseball in the 1960s as a game in transition—marked by league expansion, uprooted franchises, the growing hegemony of television, the dominance of pitchers, uneasy relations between players and owners, and mounting competition from other sports for the fans’ dollars. Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Carl Yastrzemski, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, and Casey Stengel are seen here with fresh clarity and pleasure. Here is California baseball in full flower, the once-mighty Yankees in collapse, baseball in French (in Montreal), indoor baseball (at the Astrodome), and sweet spring baseball (in Florida)—as Angell observes, “Always, it seems, there is something more to be discovered about this game.”
303 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Roger Angell
53 books112 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 - 30 of 133 reviews
March 1, 2023
Missing Link between my father's dalliance with baseball through the mid-60's and the game I came to know and love as a child of the 80's. Expansion, the move indoors, and the protracted competition for Americans' attention and entertainment dollar that baseball once took for granted are chronicled with prose that isn't argumentative for the Good Old Days or manipulatively emotional. Instead, Angell uses a light, lyrical style to look in on the game year-by-year, usually at World Series that lend themselves to such reflective and undistracted attention.
Worth reading twice, for a guy who doesn't usually do that. Actually added a star and a lot of highlights the second time through.
Worth reading twice, for a guy who doesn't usually do that. Actually added a star and a lot of highlights the second time through.
January 21, 2023
We lost Roger Angell and there will never be another spring training through his eyes. He was the most unusual “baseball writer” I have ever read. His long association with the magazine, The New Yorker, provided plenty of material on almost all aspects of the game on the field. The New Yorker knew what it had and allowed Angell full discretion on what was a fit topic. On one day it might be a player portrait; on another a discussion of the skill sets necessary to excel at a particular position; on a third; the joy and significance of the box score. His writing was, at the same time, engaging while never “talking-down” to his audience. Here is an example of what might capture his interest from an early point in his career.
"No novelist has yet been able to concoct a baseball hero with as tonic a name as Willie Mays or Duke Snider or Vida Blue. No contemporary novelist would dare a supporting cast of characters with Dickensian names like those that have stuck with me ever since I deciphered my first box scores and began peopling the lively landscape of baseball in my mind—Ossee Schreckengost, Smead Jolley, Slim Sallee, Elon Hogsett, Urban Shocker, Burleigh Grimes, Hazen Shirley Cuyler, Heinie Manush, Cletus Elwood Poffenberger, Virgil Trucks, Enos Slaughter, Luscious Easter, and Eli Grba. And not even a latter-day O. Henry would risk a conte like the true, electrifying history of a pitcher named Pete Jablonowski, who disappeared from the Yankees in 1933 after several seasons of inept relief work with various clubs. Presumably disheartened by seeing the losing pitcher listed as “J’bl’n’s’i” in the box scores of his day, he changed his name to Pete Appleton in the semi-privacy of the minors, and came back to win fourteen games for the Senators in 1936 and to continue in the majors for another decade."
The Summer Game gives us a earlier era of baseball but Angell's writing still provides me with a full measure of joy.
"No novelist has yet been able to concoct a baseball hero with as tonic a name as Willie Mays or Duke Snider or Vida Blue. No contemporary novelist would dare a supporting cast of characters with Dickensian names like those that have stuck with me ever since I deciphered my first box scores and began peopling the lively landscape of baseball in my mind—Ossee Schreckengost, Smead Jolley, Slim Sallee, Elon Hogsett, Urban Shocker, Burleigh Grimes, Hazen Shirley Cuyler, Heinie Manush, Cletus Elwood Poffenberger, Virgil Trucks, Enos Slaughter, Luscious Easter, and Eli Grba. And not even a latter-day O. Henry would risk a conte like the true, electrifying history of a pitcher named Pete Jablonowski, who disappeared from the Yankees in 1933 after several seasons of inept relief work with various clubs. Presumably disheartened by seeing the losing pitcher listed as “J’bl’n’s’i” in the box scores of his day, he changed his name to Pete Appleton in the semi-privacy of the minors, and came back to win fourteen games for the Senators in 1936 and to continue in the majors for another decade."
The Summer Game gives us a earlier era of baseball but Angell's writing still provides me with a full measure of joy.
January 16, 2018
Compilation of Roger Angell’s essays about baseball, written for the New Yorker during the 1962 – 1971 seasons. He recaps each year’s World Series, but most of the highlights for me were the sections of local flavor, such as visiting Spring Training, describing the rollercoaster ride of a New York Mets fan, covering the early days of the Houston Astrodome, observing the arrival of “sports as entertainment” (which continues to this day), recounting the French terms used by the dual-language Montreal Expos, putting forth views on expansion and the attendant increase in playoffs (which was just beginning back then), and relating the sights and sounds of what it was like to attend games in various stadiums across the country. The last essay, The Inner Stadium, explores the timelessness of baseball, and how events and players can be clearly recalled from memory no matter how much time has passed. Angell’s prose is top notch, evoking the spirit of the period in a vivid manner. His love of the game shines through. Published in 1972, it is a product of its time, so there are a few references that may not sit well with women or other groups. Highly recommended to baseball fans, especially those interested in reading about the history of the game.
January 7, 2018
Roger Angell is considered by many, including this reviewer, the best baseball writer to grace the pages of books or magazines. This was his first book, a collection of essays covering the decade from 1961 to 1971. The topics are wide – everything from the birth of the New York Mets (the Mets are a favorite topic of many stories in the collection) to the Pittsburgh Pirates World Series victory over the might Baltimore Orioles in the 1971 World Series.
While his prose about the action on the diamond is worth the price of the book alone, his writing on so many baseball topics is also a joy to read. Whether the topic is franchise shifts, expansion of both leagues and the postseason, the “Year of the Pitcher” in 1968, the first year of indoor baseball in the Houston Astrodome or the euphoria of New England when the Boston Red Sox lived the “Impossible Dream” by winning the 1967 American League championship, Angell tells it in flowing prose and an entertaining style.
There are so many examples in the book that illustrate the beauty of Angell’s storytelling. Many times Angell explains why baseball is the best game, and I will use two quotes from the book to show how he felt about the game. In the chapter titled “A Terrific Strain” (written after the 1966 season), Angell writes that “Baseball is perhaps the most perfect visible sport ever devised, almost never requiring us to turn to a neighbor and ask ‘What happened?’” The second quote I will use for this came from the final chapter, “The Interior Stadium.” When writing about how most sports are resembling all the others, he maintains that baseball is unique, writing “Of all sports, none has been so buffeted about by this unselective proliferation, so maligned by contemporary cant, or so indifferently defended as baseball. Yet, the game somehow remains the same, obdurately unaltered and comparable only with itself.”
With prose like this, how can any reader who enjoys baseball NOT read this man’s work? It is the perfect book for readers who have not read any of his work to pick up and start enjoying. If the reader has read this book, it is well worth the time to pick up again, as it is one that I will re-read as the winter continues.
http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...
While his prose about the action on the diamond is worth the price of the book alone, his writing on so many baseball topics is also a joy to read. Whether the topic is franchise shifts, expansion of both leagues and the postseason, the “Year of the Pitcher” in 1968, the first year of indoor baseball in the Houston Astrodome or the euphoria of New England when the Boston Red Sox lived the “Impossible Dream” by winning the 1967 American League championship, Angell tells it in flowing prose and an entertaining style.
There are so many examples in the book that illustrate the beauty of Angell’s storytelling. Many times Angell explains why baseball is the best game, and I will use two quotes from the book to show how he felt about the game. In the chapter titled “A Terrific Strain” (written after the 1966 season), Angell writes that “Baseball is perhaps the most perfect visible sport ever devised, almost never requiring us to turn to a neighbor and ask ‘What happened?’” The second quote I will use for this came from the final chapter, “The Interior Stadium.” When writing about how most sports are resembling all the others, he maintains that baseball is unique, writing “Of all sports, none has been so buffeted about by this unselective proliferation, so maligned by contemporary cant, or so indifferently defended as baseball. Yet, the game somehow remains the same, obdurately unaltered and comparable only with itself.”
With prose like this, how can any reader who enjoys baseball NOT read this man’s work? It is the perfect book for readers who have not read any of his work to pick up and start enjoying. If the reader has read this book, it is well worth the time to pick up again, as it is one that I will re-read as the winter continues.
http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...
April 13, 2012
well before babip, vorp, war, and eqa became common parlance in the realm of baseball reporting, a different breed of sportswriter once thrived within the pages of newspapers and magazines across the country. perhaps none excelled as greatly in their attempts to reanimate a ballgame's action and essence in print as longtime new yorker editor roger angell. angell is well known as one of baseball's finest chroniclers, and his first book on the subject, the summer game, amply exemplifies the reasons for such accolades.
in the nearly two dozen essays that compose the summer game, each of which originally appeared in the new yorker over a span of ten years (1962-1972), angell waxes eloquent about our beloved national pastime. with poetic prose that richly captures some of the era's most talented players and impressive teams, angell offers insights and opinions that extend far beyond the field and the daily box score. his discerning observations of the game allow for impressions likely overlooked by less ardent devotees. although these essays are all now nearly a half century old, it's apparent that while so much of the game has evolved (given increases in payrolls, revenues, technologies, medicine, etc.), many of the main criticisms persist today. the timeless and enduring quality of baseball is, of course, one of its defining characteristics, and angell's essays demonstrate (here now from a vantage point fifty years later) the duality of the resolute and adaptable nature of the game itself.
the summer game stands in stunning contrast to so much of the sports writing that has come to populate sports pages and websites throughout the country today. in few places has the game of baseball been written about so beautifully as in angell's essays. the summer game provides not only a glimpse into a bygone era of baseball, but also into a time when a less frenetic social pace allowed the game a more prominent place in our collective consciousness.
in the nearly two dozen essays that compose the summer game, each of which originally appeared in the new yorker over a span of ten years (1962-1972), angell waxes eloquent about our beloved national pastime. with poetic prose that richly captures some of the era's most talented players and impressive teams, angell offers insights and opinions that extend far beyond the field and the daily box score. his discerning observations of the game allow for impressions likely overlooked by less ardent devotees. although these essays are all now nearly a half century old, it's apparent that while so much of the game has evolved (given increases in payrolls, revenues, technologies, medicine, etc.), many of the main criticisms persist today. the timeless and enduring quality of baseball is, of course, one of its defining characteristics, and angell's essays demonstrate (here now from a vantage point fifty years later) the duality of the resolute and adaptable nature of the game itself.
the summer game stands in stunning contrast to so much of the sports writing that has come to populate sports pages and websites throughout the country today. in few places has the game of baseball been written about so beautifully as in angell's essays. the summer game provides not only a glimpse into a bygone era of baseball, but also into a time when a less frenetic social pace allowed the game a more prominent place in our collective consciousness.
baseball has begun. east and west, this is the week of the unfurled bunting, the flexed mayoral or gubernatorial wing, the restored hope, the repainted seat, the april fly ball falling untouched on resodded turf, the windblown shot, and the distant row of pitchers and catchers huddling deeper into their windbreakers as the early-spring sunlight deserts the bullpen. now everything counts; from now until october, every pitch and every swing will be recorded. in another month, some order will begin to emerge from the standings. infields will have hardened, some arms and expectations will have gone bad, and enormous crowds will pour out for the first weekend doubleheaders. the long season will engage us once again.
March 8, 2015
Few works of art are truly timeless. Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Beethoven’s Fifth. Michelangelo’s David. Add to that list Angell’s “The Summer Game.” The book, a collection of essays Angell originally penned for “New Yorker” magazine in the 1960s and early 1970s, recreates an era both nostalgic and immediate. Long retired superstars like Jim Palmer, Denny McLain, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Wille McCovey, Wille Stargell, Willie Mays, Tom Seaver, and Jerry Koosman—to name just a few—come back to life in these pages. And Angell is so skilled at describing the action and nuance of each game and each play that the reader is transported to the action. Angell puts you in the stands right next to him.
Angell’s writing reveals his love of the language as much as it showcases his love of the game of baseball. For example, while discussing the Pittsburgh Pirates’ propensity for populating their pitching staff with monosyllabically named hurlers, he writes, “This year’s Buccos recklessly disposed of Mudcat Grant, but with Blass, Briles, Moose, Lamb, and Veale still on hand (I plan an extensive footnote on this startling incursion of ungulates), and the club’s coffers now heavy with championship loot, they can easily swing a deal for Vida Blue that should bring them safely through the seventies.” I know of no other writer past or present who talks about baseball with such wit and skill.
Angell appreciates baseball’s enduring paradox—a game that seems so simple is rife with endless possibilities for complexity. And despite the sport’s evolution (during the time when Angell wrote these pieces, both leagues were undergoing expansion, and divisional play—along with league playoff series—had recently been adopted), the game on the field remains familiar and pure (PEDs notwithstanding). If you love baseball, read this book, and lose yourself in the sublime.
Angell’s writing reveals his love of the language as much as it showcases his love of the game of baseball. For example, while discussing the Pittsburgh Pirates’ propensity for populating their pitching staff with monosyllabically named hurlers, he writes, “This year’s Buccos recklessly disposed of Mudcat Grant, but with Blass, Briles, Moose, Lamb, and Veale still on hand (I plan an extensive footnote on this startling incursion of ungulates), and the club’s coffers now heavy with championship loot, they can easily swing a deal for Vida Blue that should bring them safely through the seventies.” I know of no other writer past or present who talks about baseball with such wit and skill.
Angell appreciates baseball’s enduring paradox—a game that seems so simple is rife with endless possibilities for complexity. And despite the sport’s evolution (during the time when Angell wrote these pieces, both leagues were undergoing expansion, and divisional play—along with league playoff series—had recently been adopted), the game on the field remains familiar and pure (PEDs notwithstanding). If you love baseball, read this book, and lose yourself in the sublime.
January 25, 2018
Roger Angell can paint images with his prose. This collection of essays is an ode to the game he loves. It is filled with insights into the game and the emotions it generates in us and instills itself in generations of families. There are so many wonderful metaphors-too many to mention but I'll pick a few. In describing a slowly emerging 64 Mets team, "Stengel has called on Jerry Hinsley and two other rookie pitchers Bill Wakefield and Ron Locke for spot duty. They have responded with eager gallantry-often of the kind once displayed by Eton sixth-formers taking to the air against Baron von Richthofen."
And while watching the 65 World Series after the Twins went up 2-0, he made this observation: "The fans around me were all laughing and hooting,'it's all over now'. I hope he meant the game and not the series. After I had visited the clubhouse and heard Sandy Koufax's precise, unapologetic, and totally unruffled analysis of the game, I came away with the curious impression that the Twins with two straight victories, were only slightly behind in the series."
And this about my personal baseball idol Willie Mays during a Giant/Dodger division race, "Watching him this year(1971) seeing him drift across a base and then sink into full speed, I noticed all at once how much he resembles a skier in mid turn down some deep pitch of fast powder. NOBODY like him."
And then there is the last chapter especially the last page which brought me to chills. Read that chapter and the last page and you will understand Angell's love affair with this game above any other.
And while watching the 65 World Series after the Twins went up 2-0, he made this observation: "The fans around me were all laughing and hooting,'it's all over now'. I hope he meant the game and not the series. After I had visited the clubhouse and heard Sandy Koufax's precise, unapologetic, and totally unruffled analysis of the game, I came away with the curious impression that the Twins with two straight victories, were only slightly behind in the series."
And this about my personal baseball idol Willie Mays during a Giant/Dodger division race, "Watching him this year(1971) seeing him drift across a base and then sink into full speed, I noticed all at once how much he resembles a skier in mid turn down some deep pitch of fast powder. NOBODY like him."
And then there is the last chapter especially the last page which brought me to chills. Read that chapter and the last page and you will understand Angell's love affair with this game above any other.
November 20, 2008
Even as I was doing it, I wondered why I picked this tattered volume from my bookcase to re-read 20 or more years after I first read it.
While, I'm a baseball fan, I'm not an addict. While I love reading history, I've never been particularly interested in spots history. Roger Angell is a good writer but not the best "New Yorker" contributor I've read.
Then I got it. I wanted to take myself back to a more peaceful time - 1961-1971. After the recent hard fought election, with two wars going on and a financial melt-down of immense proportions, it was just nice to take myself back to a less stressful time, not only for the country but also for baseball.
In fact the only World Series game I've ever attended was in 1962 when the San Francisco Giants played the N.Y. Yankees in a seven game nail biter. I went to game two at Candlestick Park spending the night in line with a buddy to buy a $10 ticket in the bleachers. Angell writes about this series and even the game I attended.
Reading Angell's description of the various players and situations, especially the World Series, over the decade the book covers, was very satisfying as there was hardly a name he mentioned that I didn't recognize. Maybe I'm more of a "addict" than I realize.
I suspect that even someone who's a fan but wasn't there in the 60's will recognize many of the legendary names. Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson and on and on.
Baseball and its statistics are such a part of the American male psyche that understanding what went before helps us appreciate what is happening now.
I truly enjoyed this trip into the past.
While, I'm a baseball fan, I'm not an addict. While I love reading history, I've never been particularly interested in spots history. Roger Angell is a good writer but not the best "New Yorker" contributor I've read.
Then I got it. I wanted to take myself back to a more peaceful time - 1961-1971. After the recent hard fought election, with two wars going on and a financial melt-down of immense proportions, it was just nice to take myself back to a less stressful time, not only for the country but also for baseball.
In fact the only World Series game I've ever attended was in 1962 when the San Francisco Giants played the N.Y. Yankees in a seven game nail biter. I went to game two at Candlestick Park spending the night in line with a buddy to buy a $10 ticket in the bleachers. Angell writes about this series and even the game I attended.
Reading Angell's description of the various players and situations, especially the World Series, over the decade the book covers, was very satisfying as there was hardly a name he mentioned that I didn't recognize. Maybe I'm more of a "addict" than I realize.
I suspect that even someone who's a fan but wasn't there in the 60's will recognize many of the legendary names. Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson and on and on.
Baseball and its statistics are such a part of the American male psyche that understanding what went before helps us appreciate what is happening now.
I truly enjoyed this trip into the past.
January 26, 2018
I liked it well enough, and it certainly did its job of keeping me sane between baseball seasons. The writing is, by turns, excellent and plodding. He can bring alive the magic of 50 year old baseball and on the next page go into the play-by-play minutiae which I simply cannot appreciate for large doses. The period of essays in question, 1962 - 1971, is also a period of tumult in the game. Expansion teams, team moves, expanded schedule, new ballparks, new fans. All of it gets its day in here, albeit from the nostalgic point of view of someone who seems to appreciate the old days and the old fans a bit more. Very interesting and worthwhile book.
What cheered me as I tramped through the peanut shells and discarded programs and out into the hot late sunlight was not just the score and not just Casey’s triumph but a freshly renewed appreciation of the marvelous complexity and balance of baseball. Offhand, I can think of no other sport in which the world’s champions, one of the great teams of its era, would not instantly demolish inferior opposition and reduce a game such as the one we had just seen to cruel ludicrousness. Baseball is harder than that; it requires a full season, hundreds and hundreds of separate games, before quality can emerge, and in that summer span every hometown fan, every doomed admirer of underdogs will have his afternoons of revenge and joy.
July 6, 2014
This is the most beautifully written, smartly felt baseball book I've ever encountered, and it's probably in the five best non-fiction collections I've read. I cannot possibly recommend it enthusiastically enough. Angell is a treasure.
October 24, 2024
I was unsure about this book when I first started. By the end I absolutely loved it. Definitely worth a read.
February 22, 2019
A collection of essays about baseball, from 1962 to 1971. This era saw expansion, a new round of playoffs, dominating performance from pitchers or hitters, and the first hints of free agency. His prose is often poetic. The last essay is the best, looking back at baseball in his father's era and describing the true timelessness of the game.
Much of this book focuses on the Mets, from an expansion cellar dweller to the amazing season of 1969. Baltimore, a dominant team in this era, also receives plenty of ink. This book is not just about the teams, though - he looks at the fans, the stadiums, the media, and even sport in general. His comments on growing homogenization and increasing playoffs also ring true in our era.
Already a writer, these essays represent his first foray into baseball, and start (appropriately enough) with spring training. His observations are from a perspective that Ring Lardner and others didn't have, as embroiled as they were in the game. The last essay was partially about what the 70s would bring, and also reflected on what the 20s held for his father's generation. This is a quote from that essay:
“Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young. Sitting in the stands, we sense this, if only dimly. The players below us—Mays, DiMaggio, Ruth, Snodgrass—swim and blur in memory, the ball floats over to Terry Turner, and the end of this game may never come.”
I look forward to reading (and rereading) more from this author.
Much of this book focuses on the Mets, from an expansion cellar dweller to the amazing season of 1969. Baltimore, a dominant team in this era, also receives plenty of ink. This book is not just about the teams, though - he looks at the fans, the stadiums, the media, and even sport in general. His comments on growing homogenization and increasing playoffs also ring true in our era.
Already a writer, these essays represent his first foray into baseball, and start (appropriately enough) with spring training. His observations are from a perspective that Ring Lardner and others didn't have, as embroiled as they were in the game. The last essay was partially about what the 70s would bring, and also reflected on what the 20s held for his father's generation. This is a quote from that essay:
“Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young. Sitting in the stands, we sense this, if only dimly. The players below us—Mays, DiMaggio, Ruth, Snodgrass—swim and blur in memory, the ball floats over to Terry Turner, and the end of this game may never come.”
I look forward to reading (and rereading) more from this author.
December 31, 2024
Briefly: Too much of a good thing
Reading Roger Angell reminds me of eating chocolate mousse. His baseball commentary with its focus on fandom and the atmosphere of the game rather than its blow-by-blow is unique, refreshing, and a distinct flavor in a world of baseball writing. As a New Yorker column, it’s a treat to look forward to. Unfortunately, 300 pages of Angell is like gorging yourself on chocolate mousse—too much of a distinct flavor that is perfect in small quantities but simply not intended for this level of consumption. If you read The Summer Game, do it sporadically over a few months. Do not treat it as a cover-to-cover phenomenon that can be enjoyed in the course of a couple of weeks.
Reading Roger Angell reminds me of eating chocolate mousse. His baseball commentary with its focus on fandom and the atmosphere of the game rather than its blow-by-blow is unique, refreshing, and a distinct flavor in a world of baseball writing. As a New Yorker column, it’s a treat to look forward to. Unfortunately, 300 pages of Angell is like gorging yourself on chocolate mousse—too much of a distinct flavor that is perfect in small quantities but simply not intended for this level of consumption. If you read The Summer Game, do it sporadically over a few months. Do not treat it as a cover-to-cover phenomenon that can be enjoyed in the course of a couple of weeks.
August 9, 2019
Beautiful throughout, but the play-by-play recaps of 50-year-old baseball games are a bit turgid when read so far after the fact.
July 20, 2023
Interesting, series of articles sort of random thoughts. Fun, yet easy to put down and come back to.
June 7, 2021
The Summer Game by Roger Angell
I'll try to keep my gushing to a minimum, but it's just really nice when something so completely lives up to the hype. I tried my absolute hardest to not include the entire book in my Notable Quotable but the endeavor became nearly impossible once Angell started waxing poetic about the terrible, lovable 62 Mets. It's also really nice when someone takes something you love so much and can tell you exactly why you love it, across the spans of time and space.
Time and space? Well, yes - Angell wrote this book over the course of 10 seasons between 1962 and 1971, but if you had instead labeled those years 2011 to 2020, I wouldn't have noticed. The Mets were a terrible, embarrassing team at the start but later challenged for a World Series, teams threatening relocation in the name of (theoretical) financial gain at the expense of their fan bases, and baseball itself went through a talent-based existential crisis while featuring some of the greatest players to ever take the field.
Despite being so tickled by the accounts of the 1962 Mets (I've previously read "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?", but the fan perspective was an extra feather in the cap of the story of that wonderful team), what I'll remember from this book is how eerily similar conversations about the game are 50 years later and just how prescient Angell was watching this game as a fan. He adequately captured the new model of stadium, The Astrodome, that sought to capture the fan's attention with bells and whistles rather than the product on the field. The crisis invoked by the "Year of the Pitcher," in 1968, was broken down so comprehensively in just three pages that I had to mark it (183 - 186) even though I couldn't reproduce the totality of the quote.
Ultimately, though, this book serves as proof that once something good can be exploited for financial gain by people who are already richer than anyone ever needs to be, it will be a diluted and worse product as a result. Expansion - a necessity to bringing the Mets into the league! - meant it became much more difficult to follow the sport as a whole, more players (read: worse) playing the game than ever before, all in the name of making the sport more money than ever before; taxpayer-funded stadiums built to exploit the attention of upper-income fans, which increased the base of people to draw from but diluted their interest in the product; relocation, or to put it more bluntly, the shell game where a team that "doesn't make enough money" might make a little bit more for a few years by switching cities, alienating their fan base and present community.
All that said, this book also serves as proof that the game of baseball has survived the money-grubbing tomfoolery to still exist as a product worth watching. Sure, there's a group hoping for expansion to some cities that do really deserve a team. Sure, two teams are threatening relocation for financial gain. Sure, the commissioner's office is threatening tradition-altering rule changes in the name of making the game more entertaining. In fact, they've already done that. Sure, the change in emphasis on run-scoring and run-prevention has likely rendered pitchers to be mere throwers and batters to be mere swingers.
None of this has yet killed the game of baseball or what makes it so great. If tonight is a night between April and October, I'll surely be tuning in to watch the Mets.
Notable Quotable:
"'It don't seem any time at all since spring training last year.'
'That's because we're older now. You take my grandson, he's always looking forward to something. Christmas and his birthday and things like that. That makes the time go slow for him. You and me, we just watch each day by itself.'" (P. 11-12)
"What cheered me as I tramped through the peanut shells and discarded programs and out into the hot late sunlight was not just the score and not just Casey's triumph but a freshly renewed appreciation of the marvelous complexity and balance of baseball. Off hand, I can think of no other sport in which the world's champions, one of the great teams of its era, would not instantly demolish inferior opposition and reduce a game such as the one we had just seen to cruel ludicrousness. Baseball is harder than that; it requires a full season, hundreds and hundreds of separate games, before quality can emerge, and in that summer span every home-town fan, every doomed admirer of underdogs will have his afternoons of revenge and joy." (P. 15)
"I was pained for the Mets, and embarrassed as a fan. 'Baseball isn't usually like this,' I explained to my daughter." (P. 36)
"Instantly, however, I learned how wrong I had been. Gil's homer pulled the cork, and now there arose from all over the park a full, furious, happy shout of 'Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets!' There were wild cries of encouragement before every pitch, boos for every called strike. This was no Dodger crowd, but a huge gathering of sentimental home-towners. Nine runs to the bad, doomed, insanely hopeful, they pleaded raucously for the impossible." (P. 37)
"Sandy Koufax and I had learned the same odd lesson: It is safe to assume that the Mets are going to lose, but dangerous to assume that they won't startle you in the process." (P. 38)
"During this exciting foolishness, I scrutinized the screamers around me and tried to puzzle out the cause of their unique affliction. It seemed statistically unlikely that there could be, even in New York, a forty- or fifty-thousand-man audience made up exclusively of born losers - leftover Landon voters, collectors of mongrel puppies, owners of stock in played-out gold mines - who had been waiting years for a suitably hopeless cause. ... Suddenly the Mets fans made sense to me. What we were witnessing was precisely the opposite of the kind of rooting that goes on across the river. This was the losing cheer, the gallant yell for a good try - antimatter to the sounds of Yankee Stadium. This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultation yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me." (P. 40-41)
"(The Mets, like France in the nineteen-twenties, have a missing generation between the too old and the too young.)" (P. 43)
"Good pitching in a close game is the cement that makes baseball the marvelous, complicated structure that it is. It raises players to keenness and courage; it forces managers to think about strategy rather than raw power; it nails the fan's attention, so that he remembers every pitch, every throw, every span of inches that separates hits from outs. And in the end, of course, it implacably reveals the true talents of the teams on the field." (P. 43)
"I entered the fiasco in my scorecard, nodding my head sadly; same old Mets." (P. 48)
"Watching baseball at the Polo Grounds this spring has made cruel demands on my objectivity. The perspiring earnestness of all the old and new Mets, their very evident delight in their own brief flashes of splendor, their capacity for coming up with the unexpected right play and the unexpected winning game, and the general squaring of shoulders visible around the home-team dugout have provided me with so much fun and so many surprises that my impulse is simply to add my voice to the ear-rendering anthem of the Met grandstand choir - that repeated, ecstatic yawp of 'Let's go, Mets!' backed by flourishes and flatted arpeggios from a hundred dented Boy Scout bugles. Caution forces me to add, under the yells, that this is still not a good ball team." (P. 50)
"The noisy, debris-throwing, excitable Met fans have inspired a good deal of heavyweight editorial theorizing this year. Sportswriters have named them 'The New Breed.' Psychologists, anthropologists, and Max Lerner have told us that the fans' euphoria is the result of a direct identification with the have-not Mets, and is anti-authoritarian, anti-Yankee, id-satisfying, and deeply hostile. Well, yes - perhaps. But the pagan apres-midi d'un Met fan, it seems to me, also involves a simpler kind of happiness. The Mets are refreshing to every New York urbanite if only because they are unfinished. The ultimate shape, essence, and reputation of this team are as yet invisible, and they will not be determined by an architect, a developer, a parks commissioner, a planning board, or the City Council. Unlike many of us in the city, the Mets have their future entirely in their own hands. They will create it, and in the meantime the Met fans, we happy many, can witness and share this youthful adventure." (P. 54-55)
"...events on a sporting field are so brief that they belong almost instantly to the past." (P. 57)
"What does depress me about the decease of the bony, misshapen old playground is the attendant irrevocable deprivation of habit - the amputation of so many private, repeated, and easily renewable small familiarities. The things I liked best about the Polo Grounds were sights and emotions so inconsequential that they will surely slide out of my recollection. ... Demolition and alteration are a painful city commonplace, but as our surroundings become more undistinguished and indistinguishable, we sense, at last, that we may not possess the scorecards and record books to help us remember who we are and what we have seen and loved." (P. 57-58)
"The bright colors of the stands are cheerful, I guess, but women in the field boxes are not going to be pleased with their complexions during night games, when the floodlights bouncing off those yellow seats make the section look like a hepatitis ward." (P. 60)
"The homing fans on the IRT sounded like children returning from a birthday party that featured a good magician: 'Did you see that!'" (P. 62)
"As one sportswriter has observed, the only thing the Mets have to fear is mediocrity. This year, the Mets cause reminds me of nothing so much as a party of young radical vegetarians who find they are on the point of being taken seriously and, somewhat anxiously, begin to understand that they are on the printed ballots at last and are thus capable of being beaten, instead of merely insulted and brushed aside." (P. 68)
(P. 95)
"It must be assumed that baseball executives will do almost anything to climb aboard this gaudy bandwagon, and that the ultimate shape of baseball in the next ten years or so - its size, its franchise locations, and even its rules - will be largely determined not by tradition or regard for the fans or regard for the delicate balances of the game, but by the demands of the little box." (P. 101)
"The ability to find beauty and involvement in artificial commercial constructions is essential to most of us in the modern world; it is the life-giving naivete." (P. 101)
"I dug down with my fingers and found the spine of one of the hidden foul-line-to-foul-line zippers that hold the new infield together; I had the sudden feeling that if I unzipped it, I might uncover the world's first plastic worm." (P. 130-131)
"'This park keeps 'em interested enough so they don't have to keep busy with a pencil and scorecard. Why, in most other parks you got nothing to do but watch the game, keep score, and sit on a hard wooden seat. This place was built to keep the fans happy. They've got our good seats, fine restaurants, and our scoreboard to look at, and they don't have to make a personal sacrifice to like baseball. ... We're in the business of sports entertainment. Baseball isn't a game to which your individuals come alone just to watch the game. They come for social enjoyment. They like to entertain and be entertained at the ballpark.'" (P. 134)
(P. 183 - P. 186)
"I felt what I almost always feel when I am watching a ball game: Just for those two or three hours, there is really no place I would rather be." (P. 214)
"...for he went everywhere with a small attendant cloud of out-of-town and local sportswriters. Their task was unenviable. Every one of them was there to ask what is, in effect the sportswriter's only question - the question that remains unanswerable, because it scratches at the mystery that will always separate the spectator from the athlete: 'How does it feel to be you?'" (P. 264)
I'll try to keep my gushing to a minimum, but it's just really nice when something so completely lives up to the hype. I tried my absolute hardest to not include the entire book in my Notable Quotable but the endeavor became nearly impossible once Angell started waxing poetic about the terrible, lovable 62 Mets. It's also really nice when someone takes something you love so much and can tell you exactly why you love it, across the spans of time and space.
Time and space? Well, yes - Angell wrote this book over the course of 10 seasons between 1962 and 1971, but if you had instead labeled those years 2011 to 2020, I wouldn't have noticed. The Mets were a terrible, embarrassing team at the start but later challenged for a World Series, teams threatening relocation in the name of (theoretical) financial gain at the expense of their fan bases, and baseball itself went through a talent-based existential crisis while featuring some of the greatest players to ever take the field.
Despite being so tickled by the accounts of the 1962 Mets (I've previously read "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?", but the fan perspective was an extra feather in the cap of the story of that wonderful team), what I'll remember from this book is how eerily similar conversations about the game are 50 years later and just how prescient Angell was watching this game as a fan. He adequately captured the new model of stadium, The Astrodome, that sought to capture the fan's attention with bells and whistles rather than the product on the field. The crisis invoked by the "Year of the Pitcher," in 1968, was broken down so comprehensively in just three pages that I had to mark it (183 - 186) even though I couldn't reproduce the totality of the quote.
Ultimately, though, this book serves as proof that once something good can be exploited for financial gain by people who are already richer than anyone ever needs to be, it will be a diluted and worse product as a result. Expansion - a necessity to bringing the Mets into the league! - meant it became much more difficult to follow the sport as a whole, more players (read: worse) playing the game than ever before, all in the name of making the sport more money than ever before; taxpayer-funded stadiums built to exploit the attention of upper-income fans, which increased the base of people to draw from but diluted their interest in the product; relocation, or to put it more bluntly, the shell game where a team that "doesn't make enough money" might make a little bit more for a few years by switching cities, alienating their fan base and present community.
All that said, this book also serves as proof that the game of baseball has survived the money-grubbing tomfoolery to still exist as a product worth watching. Sure, there's a group hoping for expansion to some cities that do really deserve a team. Sure, two teams are threatening relocation for financial gain. Sure, the commissioner's office is threatening tradition-altering rule changes in the name of making the game more entertaining. In fact, they've already done that. Sure, the change in emphasis on run-scoring and run-prevention has likely rendered pitchers to be mere throwers and batters to be mere swingers.
None of this has yet killed the game of baseball or what makes it so great. If tonight is a night between April and October, I'll surely be tuning in to watch the Mets.
Notable Quotable:
"'It don't seem any time at all since spring training last year.'
'That's because we're older now. You take my grandson, he's always looking forward to something. Christmas and his birthday and things like that. That makes the time go slow for him. You and me, we just watch each day by itself.'" (P. 11-12)
"What cheered me as I tramped through the peanut shells and discarded programs and out into the hot late sunlight was not just the score and not just Casey's triumph but a freshly renewed appreciation of the marvelous complexity and balance of baseball. Off hand, I can think of no other sport in which the world's champions, one of the great teams of its era, would not instantly demolish inferior opposition and reduce a game such as the one we had just seen to cruel ludicrousness. Baseball is harder than that; it requires a full season, hundreds and hundreds of separate games, before quality can emerge, and in that summer span every home-town fan, every doomed admirer of underdogs will have his afternoons of revenge and joy." (P. 15)
"I was pained for the Mets, and embarrassed as a fan. 'Baseball isn't usually like this,' I explained to my daughter." (P. 36)
"Instantly, however, I learned how wrong I had been. Gil's homer pulled the cork, and now there arose from all over the park a full, furious, happy shout of 'Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets!' There were wild cries of encouragement before every pitch, boos for every called strike. This was no Dodger crowd, but a huge gathering of sentimental home-towners. Nine runs to the bad, doomed, insanely hopeful, they pleaded raucously for the impossible." (P. 37)
"Sandy Koufax and I had learned the same odd lesson: It is safe to assume that the Mets are going to lose, but dangerous to assume that they won't startle you in the process." (P. 38)
"During this exciting foolishness, I scrutinized the screamers around me and tried to puzzle out the cause of their unique affliction. It seemed statistically unlikely that there could be, even in New York, a forty- or fifty-thousand-man audience made up exclusively of born losers - leftover Landon voters, collectors of mongrel puppies, owners of stock in played-out gold mines - who had been waiting years for a suitably hopeless cause. ... Suddenly the Mets fans made sense to me. What we were witnessing was precisely the opposite of the kind of rooting that goes on across the river. This was the losing cheer, the gallant yell for a good try - antimatter to the sounds of Yankee Stadium. This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultation yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me." (P. 40-41)
"(The Mets, like France in the nineteen-twenties, have a missing generation between the too old and the too young.)" (P. 43)
"Good pitching in a close game is the cement that makes baseball the marvelous, complicated structure that it is. It raises players to keenness and courage; it forces managers to think about strategy rather than raw power; it nails the fan's attention, so that he remembers every pitch, every throw, every span of inches that separates hits from outs. And in the end, of course, it implacably reveals the true talents of the teams on the field." (P. 43)
"I entered the fiasco in my scorecard, nodding my head sadly; same old Mets." (P. 48)
"Watching baseball at the Polo Grounds this spring has made cruel demands on my objectivity. The perspiring earnestness of all the old and new Mets, their very evident delight in their own brief flashes of splendor, their capacity for coming up with the unexpected right play and the unexpected winning game, and the general squaring of shoulders visible around the home-team dugout have provided me with so much fun and so many surprises that my impulse is simply to add my voice to the ear-rendering anthem of the Met grandstand choir - that repeated, ecstatic yawp of 'Let's go, Mets!' backed by flourishes and flatted arpeggios from a hundred dented Boy Scout bugles. Caution forces me to add, under the yells, that this is still not a good ball team." (P. 50)
"The noisy, debris-throwing, excitable Met fans have inspired a good deal of heavyweight editorial theorizing this year. Sportswriters have named them 'The New Breed.' Psychologists, anthropologists, and Max Lerner have told us that the fans' euphoria is the result of a direct identification with the have-not Mets, and is anti-authoritarian, anti-Yankee, id-satisfying, and deeply hostile. Well, yes - perhaps. But the pagan apres-midi d'un Met fan, it seems to me, also involves a simpler kind of happiness. The Mets are refreshing to every New York urbanite if only because they are unfinished. The ultimate shape, essence, and reputation of this team are as yet invisible, and they will not be determined by an architect, a developer, a parks commissioner, a planning board, or the City Council. Unlike many of us in the city, the Mets have their future entirely in their own hands. They will create it, and in the meantime the Met fans, we happy many, can witness and share this youthful adventure." (P. 54-55)
"...events on a sporting field are so brief that they belong almost instantly to the past." (P. 57)
"What does depress me about the decease of the bony, misshapen old playground is the attendant irrevocable deprivation of habit - the amputation of so many private, repeated, and easily renewable small familiarities. The things I liked best about the Polo Grounds were sights and emotions so inconsequential that they will surely slide out of my recollection. ... Demolition and alteration are a painful city commonplace, but as our surroundings become more undistinguished and indistinguishable, we sense, at last, that we may not possess the scorecards and record books to help us remember who we are and what we have seen and loved." (P. 57-58)
"The bright colors of the stands are cheerful, I guess, but women in the field boxes are not going to be pleased with their complexions during night games, when the floodlights bouncing off those yellow seats make the section look like a hepatitis ward." (P. 60)
"The homing fans on the IRT sounded like children returning from a birthday party that featured a good magician: 'Did you see that!'" (P. 62)
"As one sportswriter has observed, the only thing the Mets have to fear is mediocrity. This year, the Mets cause reminds me of nothing so much as a party of young radical vegetarians who find they are on the point of being taken seriously and, somewhat anxiously, begin to understand that they are on the printed ballots at last and are thus capable of being beaten, instead of merely insulted and brushed aside." (P. 68)
(P. 95)
"It must be assumed that baseball executives will do almost anything to climb aboard this gaudy bandwagon, and that the ultimate shape of baseball in the next ten years or so - its size, its franchise locations, and even its rules - will be largely determined not by tradition or regard for the fans or regard for the delicate balances of the game, but by the demands of the little box." (P. 101)
"The ability to find beauty and involvement in artificial commercial constructions is essential to most of us in the modern world; it is the life-giving naivete." (P. 101)
"I dug down with my fingers and found the spine of one of the hidden foul-line-to-foul-line zippers that hold the new infield together; I had the sudden feeling that if I unzipped it, I might uncover the world's first plastic worm." (P. 130-131)
"'This park keeps 'em interested enough so they don't have to keep busy with a pencil and scorecard. Why, in most other parks you got nothing to do but watch the game, keep score, and sit on a hard wooden seat. This place was built to keep the fans happy. They've got our good seats, fine restaurants, and our scoreboard to look at, and they don't have to make a personal sacrifice to like baseball. ... We're in the business of sports entertainment. Baseball isn't a game to which your individuals come alone just to watch the game. They come for social enjoyment. They like to entertain and be entertained at the ballpark.'" (P. 134)
(P. 183 - P. 186)
"I felt what I almost always feel when I am watching a ball game: Just for those two or three hours, there is really no place I would rather be." (P. 214)
"...for he went everywhere with a small attendant cloud of out-of-town and local sportswriters. Their task was unenviable. Every one of them was there to ask what is, in effect the sportswriter's only question - the question that remains unanswerable, because it scratches at the mystery that will always separate the spectator from the athlete: 'How does it feel to be you?'" (P. 264)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2017
The Summer Game is an old friend, having been in my library since I picked it up on a high school band trip in 1973. I read it from time to time when I'm nostalgic for a time when baseball was not about multi-millionaires, the designated hitter, and stupidly ineffective rules purported to "speed up the game". But I mostly read it because Roger Angell's prose is so very readable and because his prose about baseball is particularly wonderful in that he writes as a fan (which he is) rather than as a sportswriter (which he was and is not).
The book is essentially about baseball in the 1960s and Mr. Angell looks at the sport from a multitude of points of view: the languid days of spring training; the birth and struggles of the worst team of all times, the 1962 New York Mets; the changes wrought in the sport by expansion, the relocation of franchises, and television; and the myriad of exciting and memorable pennant races and World Series in the era between 1962 and 1971. But, most of all, it's a story about the love that Mr. Angell has for the National Pastime.
In the end, the best thing I can say is that, pre-Angell, I was a Pirates fan; post-Angell, I became a baseball fan. And, while this is ancient history to many now, it is still a worthwhile read, if only to remember a time when the most important thing in baseball was the game played between the lines.
The book is essentially about baseball in the 1960s and Mr. Angell looks at the sport from a multitude of points of view: the languid days of spring training; the birth and struggles of the worst team of all times, the 1962 New York Mets; the changes wrought in the sport by expansion, the relocation of franchises, and television; and the myriad of exciting and memorable pennant races and World Series in the era between 1962 and 1971. But, most of all, it's a story about the love that Mr. Angell has for the National Pastime.
In the end, the best thing I can say is that, pre-Angell, I was a Pirates fan; post-Angell, I became a baseball fan. And, while this is ancient history to many now, it is still a worthwhile read, if only to remember a time when the most important thing in baseball was the game played between the lines.
December 19, 2022
Roger Angell is my favorite writer on the sport of baseball.
This is his first published baseball book, containing his pieces from The New Yorker. The time frame is mostly the 1960s, with the book starting out with a visit to spring training in Florida in 1962. Angell, like his stepfather E.B.White, is a terrific prose writer and brings out the most wonderful descriptions of ballplayers, the sport itself, and what it is like to be a fan. As the book jacket says, the 1960s were a major era of transition for baseball and it is covered well under the observant eye of Angell and coupled to his elegant prose.
If you're going to read one writer on baseball, then Angell is your best choice. And this book among his several books would be my recommendation on where to start.
This is his first published baseball book, containing his pieces from The New Yorker. The time frame is mostly the 1960s, with the book starting out with a visit to spring training in Florida in 1962. Angell, like his stepfather E.B.White, is a terrific prose writer and brings out the most wonderful descriptions of ballplayers, the sport itself, and what it is like to be a fan. As the book jacket says, the 1960s were a major era of transition for baseball and it is covered well under the observant eye of Angell and coupled to his elegant prose.
If you're going to read one writer on baseball, then Angell is your best choice. And this book among his several books would be my recommendation on where to start.
March 28, 2023
Roger Angell’s actual biography compares favorably to that of Paul Bunyan. His mother was an early editorial pillar of The New Yorker. His father served as president of the ACLU for two decades. His stepfather was the iconic E.B. White. And Angell himself wrote for The New Yorker for seven decades and is arguably the best baseball writer in the history of the game. He saw Babe Ruth play and he saw Shohei Ohtani play. For many years, the definitive account of the World Series wasn’t on record until Angell could gather his thoughts and publish them. This was his first compiled baseball collection. Now more than 50 years old, The Summer Game reads like ancient history at times, and apropos to any era in others. Angell recalls days walking down crowded streets in Brooklyn, where, “One out of every three or four of them carries a transistor radio, in order to be told what he is seeing, and the din from these is so loud in the stands that every spectator can hear the voice of Vin Scully, the Dodger announcer, hovering about his ears throughout the game.” It’s not unfair to draw a parallel between Scully and Angell. Pulling out one of Angell’s old books is not a whole lot different than pulling out an old audio recording of Vin.
As a baseball fan, you’re treated to detailed impressions of Frank Robinson’s stylish stirrups, Roberto Clemente’s hitting off his front foot, Whitey Ford’s businesslike deportment (“like a Fifth Avenue bank president”). This is an author who remembers Lefty Gomez’s Yankee Stadium debut and John McGraw wearing suits in the Polo Grounds. And his insight goes beyond that of the casual observer.
The Mets’ catching is embarrassing. Choo Choo Coleman and Norm Sherry, the two receivers, are batting .215 and .119 respectively. Neither can throw, and Coleman, who is eager and combative, handles outside curve balls like a man fighting bees.
Dick Hall is a Baltimore institution, like crab cakes. He is six feet six and one-half inches tall and forty years old, and he pitches with an awkward, sidewise motion that suggests a man feeling under his bed for a lost collar stud. He throws a sneaky fast ball and never, or almost never, walks batters; he has given up exactly twenty unintentional bases on balls in the past four hundred and eighteen innings, dating back to 1965. Hall is almost bald; he has ulcers, a degree in economics from Swarthmore, a Mexican wife, four children, and an off-season job as a certified public accountant; and he once startled his bullpen mates by trying to estimate mathematically how many drops of rain were falling on the playing field during a shower.
Angell offers impressions of club expansions, teams moving across the country, television revenue, the reserve clause, Charley Finley, the Astrodome:
Each level of the stands was painted a different color—royal blue, gold, purple, black, tangerine, and crimson—and I had the momentary sensation that I was sinking slowly through the blackberry-brandy layer of a pousse-café.
This particular volume is ‘60s-heavy, beautifully encompassing New York’s fascination with the ’62 Mets and culminating with their improbable rise to the ’69 title. Angell is at his best when writing about clubs he has followed closely, and he aims to capture the culture of baseball and its relationship with its fans.
During this exciting foolishness, I scrutinized the screamers around me and tried to puzzle out the cause of their unique affliction. It seemed statistically unlikely that there could be, even in New York, a forty- or fifty-thousand-man audience made up exclusively of born losers—leftover Landon voters, collectors of mongrel puppies, owners of stock in played-out gold mines—who had been waiting years for a suitably hopeless cause. Nor was it conceivable that they were all ex-Dodgers or ex-Giant rooters who had been embittered by the callous snatching away of their old teams; no one can stay that bitter for five years. And they were not all home-town sentimentalists, for this is a city known for its cool and its successful teams.
…
This was the losing cheer, the gallant yell for a good try—antimatter to the sounds of Yankee Stadium. This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me.
And beautiful passages. Here are two very different ones.
There was something sad here—perhaps the thought that for Yastrzemski, more than for anyone else, this summer could not come again. He had become a famous star, with all the prizes and ugly burdens we force on the victims of celebrity, and from now on he would be set apart from us and his teammates and the easy time of his youth.
I spent much of the warm, blustery afternoon enjoying the sideshows in the stands—a teen-age bugle-and-garbage-pail-lid corps in the upper deck, a small boy near me who spread mustard on his hot dog with his ball-point pen, and a pretty airline stewardess next to me who wrote letters throughout the game, only rarely lifting her sleepy eyes to watch the action below.
Is it possible that 101 years of Angell weren’t enough? I’m sure he would have had plenty to say about the last couple of years. Baseball is instituting a pitch clock this year to speed up the pitchers, and we’ll never get to read about it through his eyes and words. But one beautiful thing about dead writers is that we can always re-read their stuff. And so we do.
As a baseball fan, you’re treated to detailed impressions of Frank Robinson’s stylish stirrups, Roberto Clemente’s hitting off his front foot, Whitey Ford’s businesslike deportment (“like a Fifth Avenue bank president”). This is an author who remembers Lefty Gomez’s Yankee Stadium debut and John McGraw wearing suits in the Polo Grounds. And his insight goes beyond that of the casual observer.
The Mets’ catching is embarrassing. Choo Choo Coleman and Norm Sherry, the two receivers, are batting .215 and .119 respectively. Neither can throw, and Coleman, who is eager and combative, handles outside curve balls like a man fighting bees.
Dick Hall is a Baltimore institution, like crab cakes. He is six feet six and one-half inches tall and forty years old, and he pitches with an awkward, sidewise motion that suggests a man feeling under his bed for a lost collar stud. He throws a sneaky fast ball and never, or almost never, walks batters; he has given up exactly twenty unintentional bases on balls in the past four hundred and eighteen innings, dating back to 1965. Hall is almost bald; he has ulcers, a degree in economics from Swarthmore, a Mexican wife, four children, and an off-season job as a certified public accountant; and he once startled his bullpen mates by trying to estimate mathematically how many drops of rain were falling on the playing field during a shower.
Angell offers impressions of club expansions, teams moving across the country, television revenue, the reserve clause, Charley Finley, the Astrodome:
Each level of the stands was painted a different color—royal blue, gold, purple, black, tangerine, and crimson—and I had the momentary sensation that I was sinking slowly through the blackberry-brandy layer of a pousse-café.
This particular volume is ‘60s-heavy, beautifully encompassing New York’s fascination with the ’62 Mets and culminating with their improbable rise to the ’69 title. Angell is at his best when writing about clubs he has followed closely, and he aims to capture the culture of baseball and its relationship with its fans.
During this exciting foolishness, I scrutinized the screamers around me and tried to puzzle out the cause of their unique affliction. It seemed statistically unlikely that there could be, even in New York, a forty- or fifty-thousand-man audience made up exclusively of born losers—leftover Landon voters, collectors of mongrel puppies, owners of stock in played-out gold mines—who had been waiting years for a suitably hopeless cause. Nor was it conceivable that they were all ex-Dodgers or ex-Giant rooters who had been embittered by the callous snatching away of their old teams; no one can stay that bitter for five years. And they were not all home-town sentimentalists, for this is a city known for its cool and its successful teams.
…
This was the losing cheer, the gallant yell for a good try—antimatter to the sounds of Yankee Stadium. This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me.
And beautiful passages. Here are two very different ones.
There was something sad here—perhaps the thought that for Yastrzemski, more than for anyone else, this summer could not come again. He had become a famous star, with all the prizes and ugly burdens we force on the victims of celebrity, and from now on he would be set apart from us and his teammates and the easy time of his youth.
I spent much of the warm, blustery afternoon enjoying the sideshows in the stands—a teen-age bugle-and-garbage-pail-lid corps in the upper deck, a small boy near me who spread mustard on his hot dog with his ball-point pen, and a pretty airline stewardess next to me who wrote letters throughout the game, only rarely lifting her sleepy eyes to watch the action below.
Is it possible that 101 years of Angell weren’t enough? I’m sure he would have had plenty to say about the last couple of years. Baseball is instituting a pitch clock this year to speed up the pitchers, and we’ll never get to read about it through his eyes and words. But one beautiful thing about dead writers is that we can always re-read their stuff. And so we do.
December 29, 2014
This is a great book if you're looking for a reference guide to the national pastime in the 1960s. And while the essays possess some excellent writing, the book does not lend itself to fans of narrative non-fiction.
The most interesting tidbits are Angell's dissection of the Mets' early, comical seasons, as well as of the Astrodome's monstrous and distracting electronic scoreboard, which heralded in the idea that the game of baseball is not enough to entertain stadium crowds; he writes:
The most interesting tidbits are Angell's dissection of the Mets' early, comical seasons, as well as of the Astrodome's monstrous and distracting electronic scoreboard, which heralded in the idea that the game of baseball is not enough to entertain stadium crowds; he writes:
"I do not wish them luck with this vulgar venture..."
June 21, 2015
I have a soft spot for baseball because it gets so much flak for being boring and repetitive. But Angell's classic feels like art imitating life, with so much repetition to make you feel those criticisms in every page. The book felt like every minute of a 162 game season where your team is last wire to wire. I also hoped I'd never read a book that involved a man crush on Ed Kranepool, but that dream is gone.
August 31, 2020
Absolutely delightful to start, but then I got a bit mired in the detail of each World Series Angell describes. I wish I'd read it more slowly, a series a week maybe, to savour the details. But I still enjoyed it, and Angell is a funny, discerning writer.
June 29, 2020
Absolutely love this book. Angell writes with a "you are there" immediacy that captivated me from the first page.
October 19, 2020
Most of the book was game summaries. Not what I expected. The pages which were about the overall beauty of baseball, or about changes in the game, were well written. There just weren’t many of these.
August 13, 2017
I have loved baseball for as long as I can remember. I have also been an avid reader from a very young age. Thus it would seem the writings of Roger Angell were destined for me. I read a few of his baseball books in the mid seventies, well shy of being a teenager, and I remember they were among my all time favorites. Of course, at the time, being a small country kid, I had no idea what The New Yorker was. I did know that this seemed to be a special kind of " adult " appreciation of the game and its players. It is funny how strong the memories of some early reading experiences are. This, while I struggle to remember the plot and characters of a novel I read ( and enjoyed ) last month. I can easily picture the brown bordered Street and Smith's preseason baseball issue available each spring. I would instruct my Mom to look for it on the magazine rack on the grocery store, the Friday she brought it home heralded a celebratory weekend of reading. Sometime in the late seventies I purchased a " Sport " magazine which featured an article on Bruins legend Derek Sanderson. Evidently at the time he has had a colostomy of some sort because he spoke very profanely about having to shit in a bag. I was dumbfounded, athletes talked this way? In a magazine? For everyone to see?
All this is a roundabout way of saying that, as much as I did not remember the content of the books, I very much remembered the joy of reading them. This spring Amazon featured a deal where The Summer Game and two other of Angell's baseball books were available for Kindle download for the price of $2.99. It was an easy purchase.
Last night I finished The Summer Game, in which the author writes about the baseball seasons from 1961 to 1971. Writing here about specific anecdotes would be meaningless, if you are a baseball fan you have read or will want to read the book for yourself, but, if one is not a baseball nerd, the details will bore you. The gist is this, the information is for the beyond casual baseball fan. However, the writing is for the beyond casual fan of literary merit. It is an enticing, but obviously rare combination.
Pick a season in this window here. The 64 Yanks/Cards, the strong mini dynasty of the Orioles from 66 to 71, appearing in the World Series several times and led by that incredible pitching and the Robinson " brothers ". The storied 67 Red Sox season which seems to have overshadowed the great Cards team of the same year. The 68 Tigers with Denny Mclain's 30 wins but led in the series by the tough lefty Mickey Lolich. And, as a recurring subject, Angell visits the storied first decade of the Mets. From the legendary ineptitude of Stengel's 61 team to the wonder of the hopelessly overmatched " Amazins" winning it all in 1969 in just FIVE games.
This era was, in retrospect, the height of the black baseball player. Never again would they so dominate the landscape, especially in The National League. Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, are three players that come to mind but there were many more. Over this era also hung the reserve clause. Curt Flood's sacrifice of a full season to take Major League Baseball to the Supreme Court set the table for the 1975 Messersmith/McNally decision.
Angell, it seems now, was uniquely qualified to write about the love of baseball and, at the same time, to examine the many weights it was struggling under in the sixties. As the country changed, so did baseball, in no way more than in the excelling of black players and the coming storm against total subservience to the baseball owners whims.
A final note: I found myself chuckling several times reading Angell address current issues effecting baseball in the sixties. He writes about the distraction of the youth of America, the myriad opportunities for entertainment among kids today that make baseball less popular. He speaks of the shortening attention span of the sports fan, the loss of prime athletes to other sports such as football and basketball. Some pieces are prescient and some not so much, but what really is clear is that baseball today has the same conversations. The game is too long, there is no clock, kids have too many choices, we are losing the best athletes.
Which, for baseball, conversely, might be the best news of all, the more things change the more things stay the same. Baseball is, and will remain, The Summer Game.
* It is hard to believe that, at 97, Angel still writes, and writes well. His long baseball books don't happen anymore but his occasional piece in The New Yorker on baseball still resonates. A long piece he wrote recently on the struggles and changes of life in his 90's was one of the most well received and recognized pieces in his illustrious career.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that, as much as I did not remember the content of the books, I very much remembered the joy of reading them. This spring Amazon featured a deal where The Summer Game and two other of Angell's baseball books were available for Kindle download for the price of $2.99. It was an easy purchase.
Last night I finished The Summer Game, in which the author writes about the baseball seasons from 1961 to 1971. Writing here about specific anecdotes would be meaningless, if you are a baseball fan you have read or will want to read the book for yourself, but, if one is not a baseball nerd, the details will bore you. The gist is this, the information is for the beyond casual baseball fan. However, the writing is for the beyond casual fan of literary merit. It is an enticing, but obviously rare combination.
Pick a season in this window here. The 64 Yanks/Cards, the strong mini dynasty of the Orioles from 66 to 71, appearing in the World Series several times and led by that incredible pitching and the Robinson " brothers ". The storied 67 Red Sox season which seems to have overshadowed the great Cards team of the same year. The 68 Tigers with Denny Mclain's 30 wins but led in the series by the tough lefty Mickey Lolich. And, as a recurring subject, Angell visits the storied first decade of the Mets. From the legendary ineptitude of Stengel's 61 team to the wonder of the hopelessly overmatched " Amazins" winning it all in 1969 in just FIVE games.
This era was, in retrospect, the height of the black baseball player. Never again would they so dominate the landscape, especially in The National League. Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, are three players that come to mind but there were many more. Over this era also hung the reserve clause. Curt Flood's sacrifice of a full season to take Major League Baseball to the Supreme Court set the table for the 1975 Messersmith/McNally decision.
Angell, it seems now, was uniquely qualified to write about the love of baseball and, at the same time, to examine the many weights it was struggling under in the sixties. As the country changed, so did baseball, in no way more than in the excelling of black players and the coming storm against total subservience to the baseball owners whims.
A final note: I found myself chuckling several times reading Angell address current issues effecting baseball in the sixties. He writes about the distraction of the youth of America, the myriad opportunities for entertainment among kids today that make baseball less popular. He speaks of the shortening attention span of the sports fan, the loss of prime athletes to other sports such as football and basketball. Some pieces are prescient and some not so much, but what really is clear is that baseball today has the same conversations. The game is too long, there is no clock, kids have too many choices, we are losing the best athletes.
Which, for baseball, conversely, might be the best news of all, the more things change the more things stay the same. Baseball is, and will remain, The Summer Game.
* It is hard to believe that, at 97, Angel still writes, and writes well. His long baseball books don't happen anymore but his occasional piece in The New Yorker on baseball still resonates. A long piece he wrote recently on the struggles and changes of life in his 90's was one of the most well received and recognized pieces in his illustrious career.
May 15, 2025
This is another collection of Angell baseball essays that originally ran in The New Yorker, this volume covering the 1960s into 1971. It mainly is made up of 15-20 page novellas about each season or postseason, with a few more general odes to baseball, fandom, and both of their roles in American society.
As a teenager, I fell in love with Angell's writing. As a middle-aged man, I still enjoy it, though I'm not quite as romantic about it as I once was. Still, it made me both want to watch the sport and want to write, so something he's doing still works for me, clearly.
Like 98.72% of baseball writers of his time, Angell grew up in New York. But unlike most I've read, he was a Giants fan -- not a Dodgers fan or (heaven forbid) a Yankee rooter. Thus, many of the stories touch on the Polo Grounds, how wonderfully eccentric it was, what an exciting place to watch a game, and what - ultimately - was home to nearly annual heartbreak.
I grew up playing APBA baseball, and, nerd-ily, I tried to replay the 1950 season due to my fondness for the old Brooklyn Dodgers. I never got too far into it, though I spent endless hours playing the game (and was roundly mocked by my older brothers and any friend who knew I did it, so I was often surreptitious about it) and became very knowledgable about 1940s and 1950s teams and players. These stories, however, are about the 1960s, which oddly, is probably one of the eras I know the least about. Though...that's not entirely true -- it's really the years between 1970-1974 (just as I was being born) that represent the largest gap in my baseball historical knowledge. This manifests itself not in being clueless on who won in those years (in order, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, then Oakland three times), but not recognizing *every* name of the starting lineups across the league, and some of the relievers. This is also partially true about the '60s outside the Dodgers and Yankees, whose players remain ubiquitous to me even now.
So when Angell waxes rhapsodic about Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, and Brooks Robinson, he is (very elegantly) telling me things I already know, but am very happy to review. But then he tells me some things that perhaps I didn't really know -- just how devastating Lou Brock was to opposing defenses (he fades into an earlier, better version of Vince Coleman in my memory, though I know that is incorrect -- AND Mr. Brock awarded me a trophy for hitting 3 home runs at my 12-year-old Little League banquet in 1985; how, again, did the parents in Crystal Lake, IL pull off that appearance?), or the fact that Mickey Lolich was left-handed, or that Denny McClain, after this 31-win season in 1968 (at age 24), rapidly faded into obscurity and was out of baseball by 1973.
Angell does a lot of editorializing about the greed of owners and the shift in baseball fandom during these turbulent years. When the decade opened, there were still just 16 teams across two leagues, though the Dodgers and Giants had moved West, and the Browns had moved East (to become the Orioles). Then, in 1961, the LA Angels and the Minnesota Twins appeared, followed by the Colt .45s and the Mets in '62. In '65, the Angels left for Anaheim (and the Colt .45s became the Astros); in '66 the Braves for Atlanta; in '68 the Athletics for Oakland; and in '69, things really below up -- adding the Seattle Pilots, Kansas City Royals, Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres, requiring each league to be broken into 2 6-team divisions, necessitating an extra round of playoffs before the World Series. Considering the stasis of the sport, its cities and its teams until the late 1950s, this represented an extraordinary amount of change in a short period of time, and Angell beautifully documents how head-spinning that was to someone (who was almost exactly my current age) at the time.
Most importantly, Angell simply writes wonderfully:
"The Polo Grounds, which is in the last few months of its disreputable life, is a vast assemblage of front stoops and rusty fire escapes. On a hot summer evening, everyone here is touching someone else; there are no strangers, no one is private."
"It was something about the levels and demands of the sport we had seen (the '68 WS) -- as if the baseball itself had somehow surpassed the players and the results. It was the baseball that won."
There are endless nuggets such as these, if I only I had dog-eared a few more of the pages. But if you're a baseball fan, picking up a book of Angell's essays is about as close as one can get to "required reading".
As a teenager, I fell in love with Angell's writing. As a middle-aged man, I still enjoy it, though I'm not quite as romantic about it as I once was. Still, it made me both want to watch the sport and want to write, so something he's doing still works for me, clearly.
Like 98.72% of baseball writers of his time, Angell grew up in New York. But unlike most I've read, he was a Giants fan -- not a Dodgers fan or (heaven forbid) a Yankee rooter. Thus, many of the stories touch on the Polo Grounds, how wonderfully eccentric it was, what an exciting place to watch a game, and what - ultimately - was home to nearly annual heartbreak.
I grew up playing APBA baseball, and, nerd-ily, I tried to replay the 1950 season due to my fondness for the old Brooklyn Dodgers. I never got too far into it, though I spent endless hours playing the game (and was roundly mocked by my older brothers and any friend who knew I did it, so I was often surreptitious about it) and became very knowledgable about 1940s and 1950s teams and players. These stories, however, are about the 1960s, which oddly, is probably one of the eras I know the least about. Though...that's not entirely true -- it's really the years between 1970-1974 (just as I was being born) that represent the largest gap in my baseball historical knowledge. This manifests itself not in being clueless on who won in those years (in order, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, then Oakland three times), but not recognizing *every* name of the starting lineups across the league, and some of the relievers. This is also partially true about the '60s outside the Dodgers and Yankees, whose players remain ubiquitous to me even now.
So when Angell waxes rhapsodic about Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, and Brooks Robinson, he is (very elegantly) telling me things I already know, but am very happy to review. But then he tells me some things that perhaps I didn't really know -- just how devastating Lou Brock was to opposing defenses (he fades into an earlier, better version of Vince Coleman in my memory, though I know that is incorrect -- AND Mr. Brock awarded me a trophy for hitting 3 home runs at my 12-year-old Little League banquet in 1985; how, again, did the parents in Crystal Lake, IL pull off that appearance?), or the fact that Mickey Lolich was left-handed, or that Denny McClain, after this 31-win season in 1968 (at age 24), rapidly faded into obscurity and was out of baseball by 1973.
Angell does a lot of editorializing about the greed of owners and the shift in baseball fandom during these turbulent years. When the decade opened, there were still just 16 teams across two leagues, though the Dodgers and Giants had moved West, and the Browns had moved East (to become the Orioles). Then, in 1961, the LA Angels and the Minnesota Twins appeared, followed by the Colt .45s and the Mets in '62. In '65, the Angels left for Anaheim (and the Colt .45s became the Astros); in '66 the Braves for Atlanta; in '68 the Athletics for Oakland; and in '69, things really below up -- adding the Seattle Pilots, Kansas City Royals, Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres, requiring each league to be broken into 2 6-team divisions, necessitating an extra round of playoffs before the World Series. Considering the stasis of the sport, its cities and its teams until the late 1950s, this represented an extraordinary amount of change in a short period of time, and Angell beautifully documents how head-spinning that was to someone (who was almost exactly my current age) at the time.
Most importantly, Angell simply writes wonderfully:
"The Polo Grounds, which is in the last few months of its disreputable life, is a vast assemblage of front stoops and rusty fire escapes. On a hot summer evening, everyone here is touching someone else; there are no strangers, no one is private."
"It was something about the levels and demands of the sport we had seen (the '68 WS) -- as if the baseball itself had somehow surpassed the players and the results. It was the baseball that won."
There are endless nuggets such as these, if I only I had dog-eared a few more of the pages. But if you're a baseball fan, picking up a book of Angell's essays is about as close as one can get to "required reading".
June 27, 2022
Summary: A collection of Angell’s essays covering the ten seasons of Major League Baseball from 1962 to 1971.
This year we lost Roger Angell, the long time writer for The New Yorker, at the ripe old age of 101. He was a shaping force at the magazine as well as being considered by some, “The Poet Laureate of baseball.” I knew of Angell’s writing, but it was not until now that I discovered why he was so esteemed. Quite simply, he gave words to what any of us who love the game feel about its attraction. The final essay of this book, “The Interior Stadium” gets as close as anything I’ve read to describing the game’s mystique:
“Form is the imposition of a regular pattern upon varying and unpredictable circumstances, but the patterns of baseball, for all the game’s tautness and neatness, are never regular. Who can predict the winner and shape of today’s game? Will it be a brisk, neat two-hour shutout? A languid, error-filled 13-2 laugher, A riveting three hour, fourteen-inning deadlock? What other sport produces these manic swings?”
The Summer Game collects articles Angell wrote for The New Yorker from 1962 to 1971, which is quite wonderful because this was the time when I most avidly followed the name, reading The Sporting News and watching every World Series game I could (when I was not in school). He begins with spring training at the camp of the New York Mets, who were destined to become New York’s lovable losers until late in the decade, when they became champions. He describes games at the old Polo Grounds before Shea Stadium was built and the “Go” shouters.
He traces the championship teams of the sixties and especially the World Series matchups between them: the Yankees and the Dodgers, the Giants, the Cardinals, the Red Sox, the Twins, the Mets, the Reds, the Orioles, and the Pirates. There are all the stars I grew up with–Mays, Maris, and Mantle, Koufax and Gibson and the generation that followed, Yastrzemski, Rose and Perez, Clemente and Stargell.
As the players changed, so did the stadiums. Angell describes the demise of the old box-like stadiums with seats close to the game for the bigger stadiums in the round, used for multiple sports in many cases but with fans much more distant. It is ironic that most of these stadiums that were “new” when Angell wrote have since been demolished in favor of parks much more like the old fields with modern amenities. Even the shiny new Astrodome, although still preserved, no longer serves as a baseball venue.
The heart of the book is Angell’s accounts of the World Series games of each year. He brings back memories of the dominating performances of Koufax and Drysdale, and of Bob Gibson, who broke the hearts of Boston fans in his showdown with Jim Lonborg. Gibson, pitching his third game of the series was dead tired but hung on to win 7-2. Likewise, he reminds me of the hopes fulfilled when the Pirates in nearby Pittsburgh overcame the dominating Orioles of Earl Weaver to win the 1971 World Series. Some have criticized his inning by inning, sometimes play-by-play approach, but for me, it was a walk back in time, a reminder of great baseball of the past. He fills in the detail and drama of those games long tucked away in the recesses of memory.
He describes a game in transition as leagues expanded, playoffs were introduced and old stars faded as new names like Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, and Reggie Jackson came on the scene, as TV revenues grew and with them, salaries, and new stadiums. And yet, it is the same summer game, played on a diamond, between baselines, nine players in the lineup on each side, fans in the seats behind first or third, filling out scorecards, rooting for the home team, vicariously sharing in the glory of the game.
Thank you Roger Angell! One can only hope there will be baseball in heaven so that Roger Angell can write about it.
This year we lost Roger Angell, the long time writer for The New Yorker, at the ripe old age of 101. He was a shaping force at the magazine as well as being considered by some, “The Poet Laureate of baseball.” I knew of Angell’s writing, but it was not until now that I discovered why he was so esteemed. Quite simply, he gave words to what any of us who love the game feel about its attraction. The final essay of this book, “The Interior Stadium” gets as close as anything I’ve read to describing the game’s mystique:
“Form is the imposition of a regular pattern upon varying and unpredictable circumstances, but the patterns of baseball, for all the game’s tautness and neatness, are never regular. Who can predict the winner and shape of today’s game? Will it be a brisk, neat two-hour shutout? A languid, error-filled 13-2 laugher, A riveting three hour, fourteen-inning deadlock? What other sport produces these manic swings?”
The Summer Game collects articles Angell wrote for The New Yorker from 1962 to 1971, which is quite wonderful because this was the time when I most avidly followed the name, reading The Sporting News and watching every World Series game I could (when I was not in school). He begins with spring training at the camp of the New York Mets, who were destined to become New York’s lovable losers until late in the decade, when they became champions. He describes games at the old Polo Grounds before Shea Stadium was built and the “Go” shouters.
He traces the championship teams of the sixties and especially the World Series matchups between them: the Yankees and the Dodgers, the Giants, the Cardinals, the Red Sox, the Twins, the Mets, the Reds, the Orioles, and the Pirates. There are all the stars I grew up with–Mays, Maris, and Mantle, Koufax and Gibson and the generation that followed, Yastrzemski, Rose and Perez, Clemente and Stargell.
As the players changed, so did the stadiums. Angell describes the demise of the old box-like stadiums with seats close to the game for the bigger stadiums in the round, used for multiple sports in many cases but with fans much more distant. It is ironic that most of these stadiums that were “new” when Angell wrote have since been demolished in favor of parks much more like the old fields with modern amenities. Even the shiny new Astrodome, although still preserved, no longer serves as a baseball venue.
The heart of the book is Angell’s accounts of the World Series games of each year. He brings back memories of the dominating performances of Koufax and Drysdale, and of Bob Gibson, who broke the hearts of Boston fans in his showdown with Jim Lonborg. Gibson, pitching his third game of the series was dead tired but hung on to win 7-2. Likewise, he reminds me of the hopes fulfilled when the Pirates in nearby Pittsburgh overcame the dominating Orioles of Earl Weaver to win the 1971 World Series. Some have criticized his inning by inning, sometimes play-by-play approach, but for me, it was a walk back in time, a reminder of great baseball of the past. He fills in the detail and drama of those games long tucked away in the recesses of memory.
He describes a game in transition as leagues expanded, playoffs were introduced and old stars faded as new names like Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, and Reggie Jackson came on the scene, as TV revenues grew and with them, salaries, and new stadiums. And yet, it is the same summer game, played on a diamond, between baselines, nine players in the lineup on each side, fans in the seats behind first or third, filling out scorecards, rooting for the home team, vicariously sharing in the glory of the game.
Thank you Roger Angell! One can only hope there will be baseball in heaven so that Roger Angell can write about it.
September 8, 2025
This book collects ten years worth of baseball essays Angell published in The New Yorker. Most, but not all, are World Series wrap-ups with bits about the pennant races that led up to them from 1962 until 1972. There are a couple New York Met-specific write-ups, which makes sense as Angell was there at the beginning to catch what until recently was the record holder for worst win/loss performance in Major League history.
There are a lot of books about baseball, but few come from a more loving and thoroughly knowledgeable perspective. I mean the kind of love that makes somebody find something interesting to say about virtually any kind of Major League game, and I mean knowledge of what can be gleaned by watching hundreds of games in person (and on TV) as well as scanning all the box scores. Combine these factors with impeccable writing skills, and you've got a beautiful book about a beautiful game.
I hated baseball until I was almost 14 years old - that was the same year I discovered hockey, as well. This means Angell covers precisely the ten years before I started paying attention. Lots of names come up here that I knew well - Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, of course, but also Tom Seaver, Boog Powell, Frank Robinson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Tommy John, Steve Blass.
Those last three deserve footnotes. Blue was described as one of the best pitchers in baseball in 1971 and a likely superstar for a long time to come. But the fact that Angell tells us his arm was sore after Game One of the '71 World Series is a sad predictor that he would never be that great again. (Though, I sure loved watching him pitch, as I loved all the Oakland A's of the 70s.)
Tommy John is mentioned a few times as a fastball specialist for the Chicago White Sox - every time he's mentioned, I realize he would become the namesake of an operation which has enabled many sore-armed pitchers to return to the game ever since he received his in 1974. (Jim Bouton is celebrated for his fastball in the 1964 World Series, and then mentioned as the celebrated author of Ball Four in the 1970 article. I wonder if his arm could have been repaired by TJ surgery.)
Steve Blass, a hero of the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates Series win would become the namesake of a player who suddenly and without warning finds he can no longer do what he has done - Blass was great and then one day he couldn't throw the ball with any sort of control. In St. Louis, we saw this happen to Rick Ankiel some 25 years ago.
Any way, if you love baseball, this will make you appreciate it even more - those last two Cardinals games (3-2 and 4-3 wins over the Giants) would have been perfect for the way Angell writes about the sport. If you don't like it, it might make you wonder what you're missing.
There are a lot of books about baseball, but few come from a more loving and thoroughly knowledgeable perspective. I mean the kind of love that makes somebody find something interesting to say about virtually any kind of Major League game, and I mean knowledge of what can be gleaned by watching hundreds of games in person (and on TV) as well as scanning all the box scores. Combine these factors with impeccable writing skills, and you've got a beautiful book about a beautiful game.
I hated baseball until I was almost 14 years old - that was the same year I discovered hockey, as well. This means Angell covers precisely the ten years before I started paying attention. Lots of names come up here that I knew well - Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, of course, but also Tom Seaver, Boog Powell, Frank Robinson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Tommy John, Steve Blass.
Those last three deserve footnotes. Blue was described as one of the best pitchers in baseball in 1971 and a likely superstar for a long time to come. But the fact that Angell tells us his arm was sore after Game One of the '71 World Series is a sad predictor that he would never be that great again. (Though, I sure loved watching him pitch, as I loved all the Oakland A's of the 70s.)
Tommy John is mentioned a few times as a fastball specialist for the Chicago White Sox - every time he's mentioned, I realize he would become the namesake of an operation which has enabled many sore-armed pitchers to return to the game ever since he received his in 1974. (Jim Bouton is celebrated for his fastball in the 1964 World Series, and then mentioned as the celebrated author of Ball Four in the 1970 article. I wonder if his arm could have been repaired by TJ surgery.)
Steve Blass, a hero of the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates Series win would become the namesake of a player who suddenly and without warning finds he can no longer do what he has done - Blass was great and then one day he couldn't throw the ball with any sort of control. In St. Louis, we saw this happen to Rick Ankiel some 25 years ago.
Any way, if you love baseball, this will make you appreciate it even more - those last two Cardinals games (3-2 and 4-3 wins over the Giants) would have been perfect for the way Angell writes about the sport. If you don't like it, it might make you wonder what you're missing.
April 21, 2020
This collection of articles published in The New Yorker covers some of his baseball writings from 1962 through the 1972 World Series. I started reading the magazine (and his baseball reportage) regularly a few years later, so these articles are new to me.
There are some early season and mid-season looks, but Angell is at his best covering the actual games in the late seasons and the World Series. I'm less enthusiastic about his observations on the business of baseball. Some of that is just dated. He's not necessarily wrong in his views, but I just found those sections less lively. He doesn't spend much time on changes in the game itself. On some level, his observations about the business of baseball--the off-the-field aspects of the game-- are a bit superficial. One example: his article on the 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals only hints at the deterioration of the Yankees organization. In contrast, David Halberstam, who wrote a number of extremely incisive books on baseball and basketball, tells a fascinating story in "October 1964" about the contrast in the two teams' organizations, how the Yankees failed to invest in their farm system, failed to aggressively pursue black players until very late in the game and in general let the organization decline. At the same time, Halberstam shows how the Cardinals built a modern organization that delivered a championship team. His writing has depths that Angell never reaches.
Nevertheless, this was an enjoyable collection of baseball articles. Few if any other writers can capture the essence of a series of games or World Series better than Angell. He excells at selecting the key moments of a game.
There are some early season and mid-season looks, but Angell is at his best covering the actual games in the late seasons and the World Series. I'm less enthusiastic about his observations on the business of baseball. Some of that is just dated. He's not necessarily wrong in his views, but I just found those sections less lively. He doesn't spend much time on changes in the game itself. On some level, his observations about the business of baseball--the off-the-field aspects of the game-- are a bit superficial. One example: his article on the 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals only hints at the deterioration of the Yankees organization. In contrast, David Halberstam, who wrote a number of extremely incisive books on baseball and basketball, tells a fascinating story in "October 1964" about the contrast in the two teams' organizations, how the Yankees failed to invest in their farm system, failed to aggressively pursue black players until very late in the game and in general let the organization decline. At the same time, Halberstam shows how the Cardinals built a modern organization that delivered a championship team. His writing has depths that Angell never reaches.
Nevertheless, this was an enjoyable collection of baseball articles. Few if any other writers can capture the essence of a series of games or World Series better than Angell. He excells at selecting the key moments of a game.
May 17, 2019
I started my springtime baseball books kind of late this year, plus I've been really busy with other work. And I kept reading this before bed, which meant I would fall asleep. In years past I have usually wrapped up my baseball books by the first weeks of the season, and here it is almost Memorial Day! The Sox have had time to stink and get better already. Time flies.
I really enjoyed this. I was iffy on it at first, because I thought 60's baseball wasn't a particularly interesting time. But these were great. They were all originally published in the New Yorker, and almost all of them are kind of summations of the season and what the World Series that year was like. My Red Sox only really make one appearance, in '67. There are lots of appearances by the Dodgers, Cardinals, Yankees, and later the Orioles. This book would also be good for Mets fans. I am a Mets enthusiast. Seems wrong to call myself a fan...they are my B team. My other league team. But I do like the Mets, and the way Angell structures this book, he gets to tell this nice little tale of the Mets - how they were born, and were terrible, but still had lots of fans in part because of the novelty, and then after seven years of being crummy, they all of a sudden had this season where they could do no wrong. It was interesting to read about the Miracle Mets just after this amazing Red Sox season (2018), because I could really understand what he was saying - a team like that gets to a point where they seem to get all the breaks, to the point where you just expect the lucky bounces because they are that kind of team. And then, the next year, it can't really be recreated. Even if most of the team is the same.
I really enjoyed this. I was iffy on it at first, because I thought 60's baseball wasn't a particularly interesting time. But these were great. They were all originally published in the New Yorker, and almost all of them are kind of summations of the season and what the World Series that year was like. My Red Sox only really make one appearance, in '67. There are lots of appearances by the Dodgers, Cardinals, Yankees, and later the Orioles. This book would also be good for Mets fans. I am a Mets enthusiast. Seems wrong to call myself a fan...they are my B team. My other league team. But I do like the Mets, and the way Angell structures this book, he gets to tell this nice little tale of the Mets - how they were born, and were terrible, but still had lots of fans in part because of the novelty, and then after seven years of being crummy, they all of a sudden had this season where they could do no wrong. It was interesting to read about the Miracle Mets just after this amazing Red Sox season (2018), because I could really understand what he was saying - a team like that gets to a point where they seem to get all the breaks, to the point where you just expect the lucky bounces because they are that kind of team. And then, the next year, it can't really be recreated. Even if most of the team is the same.
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