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 Kettmann, 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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
New Yorker writer Roger Angell has been penning brilliant pieces about baseball for more than 40 years, and in that time he's established himself as one of the most beloved and respected writers in the business. Now he's collected nearly 30 of his best works in Game Time: A Baseball Companion, which is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the subtleties of the game.

As befitting someone who is free of the time constraints placed upon a newspaper "beat" writer, Angell's essays are carefully worded and richly researched. The results are intimate profiles of Hall of Famers such as Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, and the intensely private Bob Gibson. But Angell also writes from the stands -- as he does in a piece detailing Ron Darling's 11 no-hit innings for Yale in a 1981 NCAA tournament game -- and spends time with the less-celebrated figures who provide the true fabric of the game. Angell goes on a cross-country trip with longtime scout Ray Scarborough, whose love of the game and his job jumps off the page, and broadcaster Tim McCarver, whose erudite and attentive approach to the game mirrors that of Angell's.

In praising McCarver, Angell writes, "What you want for a companion in [baseball's] meanderings is a man who enjoys the slow parts as much as the rapids." After reading Game Time, you'll realize there's no better companion than Angell. Jerry Beach

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Roger Angell's explorations of the summer game are built on acute observation and joyful participation, conveyed in a prose style as admired as Ted Williams's swing. Angell on Fenway Park in another wild 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 seasons with refreshed understanding and pleasure. This new selection represents Angell's prime writings, short and long, from spring training in 1962 to the explosive World Series of 2002.

FROM THE CRITICS

Time

One of Game Times many virtues is that...Angell never for amoment forces the game to carry a meaning, metaphorical or otherwise, that it doesn't ask for. A deep thinker he may be, even an intellectual, but whatever baseball's true meaning, he has the good grace to write around it: he leaves the unutterable unuttered.

The New York Times

Baseball's most eloquent analyst is a senior citizen in whom a bright-eyed batboy is still very much alive. Writing about our national pastime for more than 40 years, Roger Angell retains an undiminished sense of wonder about a game in which nothing is predictable except the certainty of surprise. He discovered early on that there will always be unexpected moments to relish, and nobody helps a reader to experience or relive these evergreen epiphanies with more insight. The next best thing to being in the bleachers, in fact, is savoring accounts of the sport by this cheerful, consistently quotable scorekeeper. — Joe Conarroe

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. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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