Roger Angell, the "elegant and thoughtful baseball writer who was widely considered among the best America has produced," died May 20 at age 101, the New York Times reported. His well-informed and lyrical baseball season wrap-up essays in the New Yorker became a fall tradition, with many of them collected in books like Late Innings (1982) and Once More Around the Park (1991). Angell published his first piece in the magazine, a short story, in 1944 and went to work there in 1956. As a fiction editor, he discovered and nurtured writers like Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason and Garrison Keillor. He also worked closely with authors like Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Ruth Jhabvala and V.S. Pritchett. His annual page-long holiday poem, titled "Greetings, Friends!" was another tradition at the magazine.
Although sometimes referred to as baseball's poet laureate, Angell called himself a reporter: "The only thing different in my writing is that, almost from the beginning, I've been able to write about myself as well." The Summer Game (1972) and Five Seasons (1977) were the first of several books collecting his baseball writing. Angell worked well into his 90s. In 2014, he was awarded the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the Baseball Hall of Fame's honor for writers. In 2015, he published This Old Man: All in Pieces, a collection of essays, holiday poems and other writings. Game Time: A Baseball Companion (2003) includes highlights of Angell's baseball reportage from 1962 spring training through the 2002 World Series. It is available from Mariner Books ($15).
