I've never read a sporting novel that succeeded as do novels of the sea or of the West,… although I've read a number that attempted to inflate one sport or another into a subject as pelagic as the sea and as enormous as the West. The solution seems to lie with a zinging new book out about baseball by Roger Angell called Five Seasons…. [It] is so jammed with glee and eagerness and lore and exact fact that they all do manage to meld together. (p. 76)

The savage element of money has invaded even the players' side of baseball lately and has lent it what may turn out to be a new dimension. Angell takes an uncertain crack at defining this, having defined all of the old dimensions already. On more mundane matters, he says that batters have been losing out to pitchers because of the many night...