Roger Angell Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Keith Cushman

Critical Essay by Keith Cushman

Angell is simply the most elegant, stylish, and intelligent baseball writer in the country today. His annual autumn account of the World Series [that appears in the New Yorker] has come to be a major event for me—and on occasion it proves to be better than the World Series. Angell knows that baseball is a game deeply wedded to ritual and tradition, and the perennial smack of horsehide against leather is becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with inflated schedules, floating franchises, and an American League club called the Texas Rangers. Money has become the name of the national pastime, and a decided elegiac note runs through Angell's expert reporting. The Summer Game collects Angell's New Yorker baseball writings, and the teams parade by—in spring training, in heated pennant races, in the World Series—from the 1962 Amazin' Mets to the 1971 world champion Pirates. Perhaps some would feel that a few...
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