Product Description

"Roger Angell has been writing about baseball for more than forty years . . . and for my money he's the best there is at it," says novelist Richard Ford in his introduction to Game Time. Angell's famous explorations of the summer game are built on acute observation and joyful participation, conveyed in a prose style as admired and envied as Ted Williams's swing. Angell on Fenway Park in September, on Bob Gibson brooding in retirement, on Tom Seaver in mid-windup, on the abysmal early and recent Mets, on a scout at work in back-country Kentucky, on Pete Rose and Willie Mays and Pedro Martinez, on the astounding Barry Bonds at Pac Bell Park, and more, carry us through the arc of the season with refreshed understanding and pleasure. This new selection represents Angell's best writings, from spring training in 1962 to the explosive World Series of 2002, with many chapters not previously seen in book form.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #698236 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-04
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.69 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Amazon.com
In Game Time, Roger Angell’s essays illuminate baseball’s heart and history in careful prose that New Yorker readers have grown to anticipate each spring. The collection spans the forty-plus years of Angell’s baseball writing career and includes many of his favorite pieces as well as never-before-published material.

Rather than stringing the selections together chronologically, the book's editor, Steve Kettman, groups them by the three seasons of the game—spring, summer, fall. The structure works well to expose the breadth and depth of Angell’s writing across the years. As Richard Ford promises in the introduction, "It is by getting those. . . baseball essentials (strategies, nuances, protocols) down onto the page, and cementing the hard foundation without which sporstswriting can’t earn your time away from the game itself, that Angell has made his bones."

The downside of this approach, however, is that some selections feel dated or misplaced for readers who did not live through the seasons in question. Many of the rookies scouted or players traded have long since faded into the obscurity. And for essays like "Distance," which profiles pitcher Bob Gibson, placement in "Summer" seems forced, the piece beginning as it does with recollection of Gibson’s seventeen strikeout record set in the 1968 World Series.

But these are faults to be expected in a collection that represent the vastness of Angell’s contribution to baseball. In Angell, baseball is blessed to have found its perfect fan: literate, humble, and always eager for spring.--Patrick O’Kelley

From Publishers Weekly
Baseball, a linear game with undulating peaks and valleys, has always attracted more writers than other sports, and of those many writers few have captured the essence of the game better than Angell. This collection of new and previously published writings edited by sports writer Kettmann is a testament to Angell's unquestioned writing skills and love of the game. Chronicling unlikely people and places-a pitcher uneasy in his retirement, a struggling former star, Fenway Park from the bowels of the right-field grandstand, the faceless scout-Angell often eschews the stories in the glare of the spotlight to examine the core values of the national pastime. Like a switch hitter, he deftly commands poetic descriptions (describing Dan Quisenberry's delivery: "a swallowlike, harmless-looking thing that rose abruptly... then changed its mind") and insightful analysis (on records being broken: "this erosion of the game's most famous fixed numbers... makes baseball statistics seem alive and urgent") to create essays that rise and fall like the very action on the field. Unlike many baseball writers who remember watching the likes of Lou Gehrig play at the Polo Grounds, Angell is able to convey his love for the game of yesteryear while still appreciating the stars, achievements and intricacies of the modern game. He manages all of this by not hiding his passion for the sport under the guise of journalistic detachment. On the contrary, he wears his heart on his sleeve, rooting his way through this collection of poignant and personal slices of Americana.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* There is a lovely rhythm to these pieces, which are divided into "Spring," "Summer," and "Fall," depending on the time in the baseball year in which each is set (spring training, the regular season, the World Series). Half of the essays have not previously appeared in book form, and a few are new, brief as a one-two-three inning. Angell's prose is by turn courtly or sly, luscious or puckish, the occasional innocent pun or wicked metaphor causing one to choke on one's beer. What better thing to read in the ice and snow of a baseball-deprived winter than this sterling collection, which gathers pieces from 1962 to 2002. There's Joe Torre at third base for the Mets in 1975; here's a crystalline character study of pitcher Bob Gibson. A throwaway, you-are-there moment brings Bobby Bonds before us in high relief, readying us to meet his son Barry some pages hence. A long piece on Tim McCarver is both appreciation and analysis; a short, ribald Ted Williams story is worth the price of admission. Other highlights include Angell's incandescent report of the 1996 championship Yankees, "One for the Good Guys," and an account of the author's boyhood baseball memories, "Early Innings," which is both muscular and oddly touching. Now in his eighties, Angell distilled a lifetime of baseball observation into his brilliant book on David Cone, A Pitcher's Story (2001); this compilation reminds us again that he is our best writer on baseball and one of our best writers, period. GraceAnne DeCandido
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