Roger Angell

Born on September 19, 1920, in Manhattan, New York,{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/sports/roger-angell-dead.html|title=Roger Angell, Who Wrote About Baseball With Passion, Dies at 101 |newspaper=The New York Times|last = Garner|first = Dwight|date=May 20, 2022 |accessdate=May 20, 2022}}{{cite news |last1=Trott |first1=Bill |title=Baseball writer Roger Angell dies at 101 |url=https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/baseball-writer-roger-angell-dies-101-2022-05-20/ |access-date=May 21, 2022 |work=Reuters |date=May 20, 2022 |language=en}} Angell was the son of Katharine Sergeant Angell White, The New Yorker{{'}}s first fiction editor, and the stepson of renowned essayist E. B. White, but he was raised for the most part by his father, Ernest Angell, an attorney who became head of the American Civil Liberties Union.{{cite news |title=Roger Angell as lively as ever at age 85 |url=http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/wires/05/17/2010.ap.bbo.roger.angell.adv21.1306/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110622101408/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/wires/05/17/2010.ap.bbo.roger.angell.adv21.1306/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 22, 2011 |newspaper=Sports Illustrated |date=May 17, 2006}}{{cite news |last=Ulin |first=David L. |title=Roger Angell on what the dead don't know |url=https://www.latimes.com/books/la-xpm-2012-nov-15-la-et-jc-roger-angell-new-yorker-20121115-story.html |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=November 15, 2012}}{{cite web |first=Chris |last=Smith |url=http://nymag.com/arts/books/profiles/17043/ |title=Influences: Roger Angell |website=New York |date=May 21, 2006}}

After graduating in 1938 from the Pomfret School, he attended Harvard College.{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Orodenker |contribution=Twentieth-Century American Sportswriters |title=Dictionary of Literary Biography |volume=171 |location=Detroit |publisher=Gale |year=1996 |isbn=0-8103-9934-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h8oUAQAAIAAJ&q=Roger+Angell+Pomfret |page=5 |via=Google Books}} He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.{{cite web|last=Verducci |first=Tom |url=https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/07/22/roger-angell-tom-verducci-hall-fame |title=The Passion of Roger Angell: The best baseball writer in America is also a fan - Sports Illustrated |publisher=Si.com |date=July 22, 2014 |accessdate=May 20, 2022}}

In 1948, Angell was employed at Holiday Magazine, a travel magazine that featured literary writers.{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/05/holiday-magazine-history |title=The Visual and Writerly Genius of Holiday Magazine |last=Callahan |first=Michael |date=May 2013 |magazine=Vanity Fair |access-date=May 29, 2018 |language=en}} His earliest published works were pieces of short fiction and personal narratives, several of which were collected in The Stone Arbor and Other Stories (1960) and A Day in the Life of Roger Angell (1970).{{cite book |last1=Bonomo |first1=Joe |title=No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing |year=2019 |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-1-4962-1529-1 |pages=21, 76 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NeSKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA21 |language=en}}

Angell first contributed to The New Yorker while serving in Hawaii as editor of an Air Force magazine; his short story titled "Three Ladies in the Morning" was published in March 1944. He became The New Yorker{{'}}s fiction editor in the 1950s, occupying the same office as his mother, and continued to write for the magazine until 2020. "Longevity was actually quite low on his list of accomplishments", wrote his colleague David Remnick. "He did as much to distinguish The New Yorker as anyone in the magazine's nearly century-long history. His prose and his editorial judgment left an imprint that's hard to overstate."{{cite magazine |last=Remnick |first=David |date=May 20, 2022 |title=Remembering Roger Angell, Hall of Famer |url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/remembering-roger-angell-hall-of-famer |access-date=May 21, 2022 |magazine=The New Yorker |publisher= }}

He first wrote professionally about baseball in 1962, when New Yorker editor William Shawn had him travel to Florida to write about spring training. His career as a baseball writer coincided with the first season of the New York Mets. His style of baseball writing was inspired, he said, by John Updike's article on Ted Williams's farewell to fans at Fenway Park, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu". Angell said "John had already supplied my tone, while also seeming to invite me to try for a good sentence now and then, down the line.” His first two baseball collections were The Summer Game (1972) and Five Seasons (1977).{{cite book |last1=Bonomo |first1=Joe |title=No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing |date=2019 |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-1-4962-1529-1 |pages=67, 193 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NeSKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA67 }} These were followed by Late Innings (1982) and Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion (1988).

Angell has been called the "Poet Laureate of baseball" but he disliked the term. In a review of Once More Around the Park for the Journal of Sport History, Richard C. Crepeau wrote that "Gone for Good", Angell's essay on the career of Steve Blass,{{#tag:ref|Originally published as "Down the Drain"{{cite magazine |author=Roger Angell |title=Down the Drain |url=http://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1975-06-23/flipbook/042/ |url-access=subscription |magazine=The New Yorker |location=New York |date=June 23, 1975 |access-date=February 9, 2021 |pages=42–59}} |group=lower-alpha}} "may be the best piece that anyone has ever written on baseball or any other sport".{{cite magazine |first=Richard C. |last=Crepeau |title=Review of Once More Around the Park |volume=29 |number=3 |url=http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2002/JSH2903/jsh2903ad.pdf |magazine=Journal of Sport History |pages=510–12 }} Another essay of Angell's, "The Web of the Game", about the epic pitchers' duel between future major-league All-Stars (and eventual teammates) Ron Darling and Frank Viola in the 1981 NCAA baseball tournament, was called "perhaps the greatest baseball essay ever penned" by ESPN journalist Ryan McGee in 2021.{{cite web|url=https://www.espn.com/college-sports/baseball/story/_/id/31474244/ron-darling-frank-viola-ncaa-baseball-greatest-game-ever-40-years-on |title=Ron Darling, Frank Viola and NCAA baseball's greatest game ever, 40 years on |first=Ryan |last=McGee |website=ESPN.com |date=May 21, 2021 |accessdate=May 24, 2021}} Angell contributed commentary to the Ken Burns series Baseball, in 1994.{{cite news |last1=Schudel |first1=Matt |title=Roger Angell, editor, baseball writer at the New Yorker, dies at 101 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/05/20/roger-angell-new-yorker-dead/ |newspaper=Washington Post |date=May 20, 2022}}

Angell was married three times. He had two daughters, Callie and Alice, with his first wife, Evelyn Baker, to whom he was married for 19 years before divorcing.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/25/classified/paid-notice-deaths-nelson-evelyn-baker.html |title=Evelyn Baker Nelson obituary |work=The New York Times |date=November 25, 1997 |access-date=May 20, 2022}} Angell had a son, John Henry, with his second wife, Carol Rogge. After 48 years of marriage, Carol Angell died on April 10, 2012, at the age of 73 of metastatic breast cancer.{{cite news |title=Paid Notice: Deaths, Angell, Carol Rogge |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06EFDD1F3AF937A25757C0A9649D8B63 |access-date=February 27, 2013 |newspaper=New York Times |date=April 14, 2012}} In 2014, he married Margaret "Peggy" Moorman.{{cite news |last1=Italie |first1=Hillel |title=Longtime New Yorker writer, editor Roger Angell dies |url=https://apnews.com/article/sports-eb-white-garrison-keillor-roger-angell-62f402f5f43d38df6804e51e55bfcd2f |access-date=July 11, 2022 |publisher=Associated Press |date=May 20, 2022 }}{{cite magazine |last1=Singer |first1=Mark |title=Roger Angell at a Hundred |magazine=The New Yorker |date=September 5, 2020 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/roger-angell-at-a-hundred |access-date=May 21, 2022 |quote=He recalls a threat from Carol as her death neared: 'If you haven't found someone else by a year after I'm gone I'll come back and haunt you.' He obliged in the summer of 2014, when he and Moorman married a week or so before he was inducted into the writer’s section of the Baseball Hall of Fame...}}

His daughter Callie, an authority on the films of Andy Warhol, died by suicide on May 5, 2010, in Manhattan, where she worked as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; she was 62.{{cite news |last=Koppel |first=Niko |title=Callie Angell, Authority on Warhol Films, Dies at 62 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/arts/artsspecial/11angell.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=May 10, 2010}} In a 2014 essay, he mentioned her death – "the oceanic force and mystery of that event" – and his struggle to comprehend that "a beautiful daughter of mine, my oldest child, had ended her life".{{Cite news |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/old-man-3 |title=This Old Man |last=Angell |first=Roger |date=February 24, 2014 |newspaper=The New Yorker |issn=0028-792X |access-date=March 2, 2016 }}

Angell died of congestive heart failure at his home in Manhattan on May 20, 2022, at the age of 101.

David Remnick said, “I’m not sure there’s ever been a writer so strong, and an editor so important, all at once, at a magazine since the days of H. L. Mencken running The American Mercury,” adding “Roger was a vigorous editor, and an intellect with broad tastes.” Per his New York Times obituary, "Like his mother, Mr. Angell became a New Yorker fiction editor, discovering and nurturing writers, including Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason and Garrison Keillor. For a while he occupied his mother’s old office — an experience, he told an interviewer, that was 'the weirdest thing in the world.' He also worked closely with writers like Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Ruth Jhabvala and V.S. Pritchett."

Angell received a number of awards for his writing, including the George Polk Award for Commentary in 1980,{{cite magazine |title=Roger Angell |url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/roger_angell/search?contributorName=roger%20angell |department=Contributor Biography |magazine=The New Yorker}} the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in 2005 along with Umberto Eco,{{cite web |title=Roger Angell and Umberto Eco |url=http://www.kenyonreview.org/programs/kenyon-review-award-for-literary-achievement/roger-angell-and-umberto-eco/ |publisher=The Kenyon Review |access-date=February 27, 2013}} and the inaugural PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing in 2011.{{Cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-2011-pen-honorees-in-the-new-yorker|title=The 2011 PEN Honorees in The New Yorker|date=August 10, 2011|magazine=The New Yorker}} He was a long-time ex-officio member of the council of the Authors Guild, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.{{cite web |title=Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A |url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf |publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences |access-date=April 18, 2011}} His article This Old Man in The New Yorker on his "challenges and joys of being 93"{{cite web |title=Checking out the National Magazine Award Winners |url=https://niemanreports.org/stories/checking-out-the-national-magazine-award-winners/ |website=Nieman Reports |access-date=May 21, 2022 |date=February 3, 2015}} garnered the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism in 2015.{{cite web |title=Winners and Finalists |url=http://www.magazine.org/asme/national-magazine-awards/winners-finalists/recent |website=National Magazine Award 2015 |publisher=American Society of Magazine Editors |access-date=May 21, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924045249/http://www.magazine.org:80/asme/national-magazine-awards/winners-finalists/recent |archive-date=September 24, 2015 |format=web.archive.org |url-status=dead}}

He was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2010,{{cite web |url=http://www.baseballreliquary.org/awards/shrine-of-the-eternals/shrine-of-the-eternals-electees |title=Shrine of the Eternals – Inductees |website=Baseball Reliquary |access-date=August 14, 2019 }}{{cite web |url=https://baseballroundtable.com/the-baseball-reliquary/ |title=The Baseball Reliquary |website=Baseball Roundtable |access-date=June 13, 2022 }} and he was the 2014 recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, now known as the BBWAA Career Excellence Award, of the Baseball Writers' Association of America;{{Cite news|url=https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/10114111/roger-angell-wins-spink-award-baseball-writing|title=Roger Angell wins Spink Award|date=December 10, 2013|website=ESPN.com |agency=AP}}{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/roger-angell-baseball-hall-fame |title=Roger Angell at the Baseball Hall of Fame |magazine=The New Yorker |date=August 4, 2014 }} despite being a New Yorker writer, he was nominated by the San Francisco–Oakland chapter.{{cite news |first=Susan |last=Slusser |url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/How-Bay-Area-baseball-scribes-helped-put-Roger-17203949.php |title=How Bay Area baseball scribes helped put Roger Angell in the Hall of Fame |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle |date=May 27, 2022 }} In 2015 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters,{{cite web |url=https://artsandletters.org/pressrelease/2015-new-members/ |title=2015 Newly Elected Members |publisher=American Academy of Arts and Letters |access-date=June 13, 2022 }} a unique combination with the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ross Douthat named Late Innings, The Summer Game and Five Seasons as influences: "I can’t point to any specific philosophy or perspective on contemporary America that I arrived at from reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading Angell’s luminous accounts of baseball seasons past. But if I were to make a list of writers who taught me how to write, he’d be near the top of it."{{cite news| author=Ross Douthat| title=The Influential Books Game| work=The New York Times| date=March 25, 2010| url=https://archive.nytimes.com/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/the-influential-books-game/}} Michael Chabon names Angell and Jan Morris as "two of my favorite authors who are primarily writers of non-fiction."{{cite web|title = It Changed My Life |url= http://www.michaelchabon.com/archives/2005/03/it_changed_my_l.html |archive-url=https://archive.today/20060720152012/http://www.michaelchabon.com/archives/2005/03/it_changed_my_l.html |url-status= dead |archive-date=20 July 2006 |last=Chabon |first=Michael |date=July 2006 |work=michaelchabon.com |access-date=12 February 2009}}

Angell has four pieces excerpted in the Library of America volume Baseball: A Literary Anthology, more than any other author. Editor Nicholas Dawidoff quotes a letter Angell's stepfather, E. B. White, wrote to Angell: "It's new and exciting to have someone exploring baseball at the depth you have ventured into." Dawidoff writes:

Angell's achievement was to turn quotidian baseball writing into belles lettres. In so doing he became the preeminent baseball writer of our era, a generous, appreciative, meticulous observer whose descriptions of the game are set forth with grace, brio, and wit. (Who else would refer to "the vast pastel conch of Dodger Stadium"?) Angell has Wagnerian range (Honus, that is); he is a master capable of vivid excursions into the profile (see Bob Gibson); he can make games he never saw breathtaking in their excitement (witness the 1986 National League playoffs); and he often reflects on matters philosophical ("The Interior Stadium" is the consummate baseball essay). He can write at length and, what is often more difficult, can write in brief.{{Cite book |last=Dawidoff |first=Nicholas |title=Baseball: A Literary Anthology |publisher=Library of America |year=2002 |pages=413}}

• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=The Stone Arbor and Other Stories |location=Boston |publisher=Little, Brown |year=1960}}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=A Day In the Life of Roger Angell |year=1970 |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press }}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=The Summer Game |year=1972 |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press }}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion|year=1977|location=New York, NY|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=978-0-671-22743-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RAmd_pqSBbUC}}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=Late Innings: A Baseball Companion|year=1982|location=New York, NY|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=978-0-671-42567-8}}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion|year=1988|location=Boston|publisher=Houghton Mifflin|isbn= 0-395-38165-7}}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=Once More Around the Park: A Baseball Reader|year=1991|location=New York, NY|publisher=Ballantine Books|isbn=978-0-345-36737-2}}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone|year=2002|publisher=Grand Central Publishing|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-0446678469|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5j1lQkhEN7YC}}, about the New York Yankees pitcher David Cone
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=Game Time: A Baseball Companion|year=2003|publisher=Harcourt Trade Publishers|isbn=978-0-151-00824-7|editor=Steve Kettmann|editor-link=Steve Kettmann}}, introduction by Richard Ford
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=Let Me Finish|year=2006|location=New York, NY|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-15-603218-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a7xcA0VXZE4C}}
• {{cite book |author=Angell, Roger |author-mask=3 |title=This Old Man: All in Pieces|year=2015|location=New York, NY|publisher=Doubleday|isbn=978-0385541138}}

{{notelist}}

{{reflist|25em}}

• {{cite book |first=Joe |last=Bonomo |author-link=Joe Bonomo |title=No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing |isbn=978-1496213259 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=2019}}

{{commons category}}

• [https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/awards/spink/roger-angell Roger Angell: 2014 BBWAA Career Excellence Award winner] at the Baseball Hall of Fame
• [http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/roger-angell Articles by Roger Angell] at The New Yorker
• [https://archive.org/details/sim_boston-phoenix_1982-05-25_11_21/page/n68/mode/1up Review of Late Innings: A Baseball Companion] The Boston Phoenix

{{2014 Baseball HOF}}

{{BBWAA Career Excellence Award}}

{{Portal bar|Biography|Journalism|Baseball|New York City}}

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