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mahatmakanejeeves

(60,935 posts)
Sun May 22, 2022, 03:03 PM May 2022

Roger Angell, editor, baseball writer at the New Yorker, dies at 101

OBITUARIES
Roger Angell, editor, baseball writer at the New Yorker, dies at 101
As fiction editor, he helped mold the stories of generations of writers. As a sportswriter, he was enshrined in the writers’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

By Matt Schudel
May 20, 2022 at 5:24 p.m. EDT



Roger Angell at his office at the New Yorker in 2006. (MARY ALTAFFER/AP)

Roger Angell practically grew up in the halls of the New Yorker, where his mother, Katharine S. White, was the longtime fiction editor. His stepfather was E.B. White, the renowned essayist whose supple, self-effacing prose became the hallmark of the magazine’s style and whose literary legacy included “Charlotte’s Web.”

Mr. Angell (pronounced “Angel”), who was five years older than the magazine itself, began contributing to the New Yorker in 1944, and he joined the staff in 1956 as an editor of fiction. Over the decades, he helped mold the stories of generations of writers, including John Updike, Vladi­mir Nabokov, William Trevor, Ann Beattie and Bobbie Ann Mason.

He also wrote fiction, reviews, poems and miscellaneous pieces for the magazine, including revelatory essays about growing old. “Here in my tenth decade,” he wrote at 93, “I can testify that the downside of great age is the room it provides for rotten news.” ... Mr. Angell, who was 101, died May 20 at his home in Manhattan, said his wife, Margaret Moorman. The cause was congestive heart failure. ... Among Mr. Angell’s most memorable stories in the New Yorker were his idiosyncratic first-person essays about baseball, which led to his enshrinement in the writers’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.

In his youth, Mr. Angell watched Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play at Yankee Stadium. He witnessed Joe DiMaggio’s rookie season in 1936 and vividly recalled, in a memoir written 70 years after the fact, the pitching motion of New York Giants left-hander Carl Hubbell, “gravely bowing twice from the waist before each delivery.” ... New Yorker editor William Shawn knew of Mr. Angell’s interest in baseball and invited him to cover the sport in a leisurely, personal way that was different from the approach of most magazines and newspapers.

{snip}

By Matt Schudel
Matt Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004. He previously worked for publications in Washington, New York, North Carolina and Florida. Twitter https://twitter.com/MattSchudel
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Roger Angell, editor, baseball writer at the New Yorker, dies at 101 (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves May 2022 OP
Life was a ball with Roger Angell. How lucky we were to read about it. mahatmakanejeeves May 2022 #1

mahatmakanejeeves

(60,935 posts)
1. Life was a ball with Roger Angell. How lucky we were to read about it.
Sun May 22, 2022, 03:37 PM
May 2022
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
Life was a ball with Roger Angell. How lucky we were to read about it.

Perspective by Thomas Boswell
Columnist
May 22, 2022 at 7:35 a.m. EDT

When Roger Angell was in his 80s, I was proud to be his human shield in a spitball assault in which Roger pummeled a pompous pundit with paper wads in a Yankee Stadium press box. ... “Lean forward just a little so I can throw behind you. I think I can hit him in the head,” said Angell, the best baseball essayist ever, who died May 20 at 101.

Roger’s target was a famous but obnoxious TV know-it-all — on both sports and politics — who was standing in the auxiliary press box aisle making loud comments to a pair of sycophants on all subjects, except the playoff game in progress.

“Pipe down!” said Angell in a fake voice, firing his salvo, then falling back behind me — seated face forward, just watching the game, the image of aged innocent itself. Who could be suspicious of such an elderly literary legend — the fiction editor at the New Yorker to John Updike and Ann Beattie, and the stepson of author E.B. White? Hidden in plain sight was a third-grade saboteur on a mission. ... “Missed,” Angell hissed. “Let’s try it again.”

[Roger Angell, editor, baseball writer at the New Yorker, dies at 101]

For a couple of innings, Angell continued his bombardment, accompanied by taunts of “Watch the game,” “Get lost,” or variations on “Shut up,” though I doubt he used those two words. The dozen other writers in the press box played dumb.

{snip}

By Thomas M. Boswell
Tom Boswell has been a Washington Post sports columnist since 1984. He started at The Post in 1969 as a copy aide, and he spent 12 years as a general-assignment reporter, covering baseball, golf, college basketball, tennis, boxing and local high school sports. Twitter https://twitter.com/ThomasBoswellWP
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