Game Time : A Baseball Companion

Rating:
Summary: Masterful, moving: One of the best sports books ever
Review: I picked this up about a week ago, and finished it just this afternoon. Inbetween that time, and between the covers of this great book, I found myself caught up in the exhiliration of victory, the agony of defeat, and a variety of emotions inbetween. Roger Angell is to baseball what Shakespeare was to theatre: he captures the wide spectrum of players and coaches, fans and managers, rookies and old pros, that have made baseball a fascinating sport to follow.

Individual pieces that stick out for me are the David Cone profile, the scout, Smokey Joe Wood, and many others that make this book a wonderous journey. This is for the diehard fans, to be sure, but baseball novices will also enjoy some of the many thoughtful and well-written pieces contained here. You will finish this with a deeper appreciation of baseball itself (despite its bloated state now, Angell makes no apologies for his continued interest long after other, more traditional fans have thrown up their hands in disgust. There is just as much joy in describing the Angels-Giants match-up in '02 as there is in memorializing Teddy Ballgame Williams), and Angell's work here is truly some of the finest sports reporting I've ever read. As stated in the introduction essay, Angell's work appeared mainly in the "New Yorker", where he could have time to construct his thoughts without the threat of a nearer deadline. Thus, his writing here does service to the majesty of the events described.

For the baseball fan in all of us, Roger Angell's work is truly a gift and a joy to read. I highly recommend this work. However cynical you may be about the more recent baseball world, you will enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Pair--Baseball Season and Roger Angell
Review: If you are familiar with past baseball books of Roger Angell you know you are in for another treat with his latest offering. Part of the book includes passages from past books, but, at least to me, it doesn't detract from this book at all. A good part of the book covers recent playoffs and World Series including 2002 and if you followed the games during the past several years, these parts of the book will have additional meaning to you. A lengthy section on former Cardinals' fireballer Bob Gibson and a visit with Smokey Joe Wood while viewing a college game between Yale and St. Johns with Ron Darling and Frank Viola matching up against one another are included as is a section on broadcaster Tim McCarver "There's a lahn drahve!", and another on a scouting mission with California Angels scout Ray Scarborough. Some of these offerings go back to the early 1960's until through the year 2002. In describing playoff and World Series games, Angell doesn't merely recite game facts as to who got hits and scored runs. He has a knack for making the reader feel he is there and tells the story with colorful prose. Here are a few examples: "The hankie hordes were in full cry at the Metrodome, where the World Series began." "We repaired to Milwaukee, where, on a cold and blustery evening in the old steel-post park, County Stadium, Willie McGee staged his party." Regarding Dennis Eckersley: "His eyes burning like flashlights as he spoke." "Luis Sojo, a Venezuelan, is thirty-four but looks as if he'd put on a much older guy's body that morning by mistake." After working on a screwball in high school to imitate Giants' pitcher Carl Hubbell, Angell said, "I began walking around school corridors with my pitching hand turned palm outward, like Carl Hubbell's, but nobody noticed." I could go on and on and on with colorful tidbits found in the book, but I don't want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, if you buy this book you are in for a treat. Don't speed read it. This isn't a book to be gulped. It is like a Godiva chocolate bar. This book is to be savored.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Pair--Baseball Season and Roger Angell
Review: If you are familiar with past baseball books of Roger Angell you know you are in for another treat with his latest offering. Part of the book includes passages from past books, but, at least to me, it doesn't detract from this book at all. A good part of the book covers recent playoffs and World Series including 2002 and if you followed the games during the past several years, these parts of the book will have additional meaning to you. A lengthy section on former Cardinals' fireballer Bob Gibson and a visit with Smokey Joe Wood while viewing a college game between Yale and St. Johns with Ron Darling and Frank Viola matching up against one another are included as is a section on broadcaster Tim McCarver "There's a lahn drahve!", and another on a scouting mission with California Angels scout Ray Scarborough. Some of these offerings go back to the early 1960's until through the year 2002. In describing playoff and World Series games, Angell doesn't merely recite game facts as to who got hits and scored runs. He has a knack for making the reader feel he is there and tells the story with colorful prose. Here are a few examples: "The hankie hordes were in full cry at the Metrodome, where the World Series began." "We repaired to Milwaukee, where, on a cold and blustery evening in the old steel-post park, County Stadium, Willie McGee staged his party." Regarding Dennis Eckersley: "His eyes burning like flashlights as he spoke." "Luis Sojo, a Venezuelan, is thirty-four but looks as if he'd put on a much older guy's body that morning by mistake." After working on a screwball in high school to imitate Giants' pitcher Carl Hubbell, Angell said, "I began walking around school corridors with my pitching hand turned palm outward, like Carl Hubbell's, but nobody noticed." I could go on and on and on with colorful tidbits found in the book, but I don't want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, if you buy this book you are in for a treat. Don't speed read it. This isn't a book to be gulped. It is like a Godiva chocolate bar. This book is to be savored.

Rating:
Summary: A literate baseball treat
Review: Pound for pound Roger Angell is the best baseball writer living today. Sure, you can follow the stat geeks and daily columnists (and I do), but Angell uses the stats as only part of the story. Writing for the New Yorker has afforded him the luxury of telling the stories behind the game, and it was in the pages of the New Yorker that I first discovered his penchant for weaving great yarns out of the game of baseball, in particular David Cone's disastrous 2000 season with the Yankees which is recounted in GAME TIME.

Whether it is tracking down Bob Gibson, attending a College World Series match up between Frank Viola and Ron Darling with a nonagenarian Smoky Joe Wood, following a major league scout, or sitting with the owner of the San Francisco Giants to simply watch and talk about a game, Angell finds the humanity of the people that make the game so great. He even comes close to making me like Tim McCarver, but, alas, McCarver is still the worst broadcaster in sports.

Rating:
Summary: A literate baseball treat
Review: Pound for pound Roger Angell is the best baseball writer living today. Sure, you can follow the stat geeks and daily columnists (and I do), but Angell uses the stats as only part of the story. Writing for the New Yorker has afforded him the luxury of telling the stories behind the game, and it was in the pages of the New Yorker that I first discovered his penchant for weaving great yarns out of the game of baseball, in particular David Cone's disastrous 2000 season with the Yankees which is recounted in GAME TIME.

Whether it is tracking down Bob Gibson, attending a College World Series match up between Frank Viola and Ron Darling with a nonagenarian Smoky Joe Wood, following a major league scout, or sitting with the owner of the San Francisco Giants to simply watch and talk about a game, Angell finds the humanity of the people that make the game so great. He even comes close to making me like Tim McCarver, but, alas, McCarver is still the worst broadcaster in sports.

Rating:
Summary: Get in The Game
Review: Roger Angell is one of the best essayists around. His work in the New Yorker has always been among the best material in the magazine, not only because it is excellent writing, thoughtful and elegant but because he is always amusing and tells a wonderful story. Baseball is one of his great loves and it shows in the pieces he writes about the National Pastime. He enjoys the pacing, the action, the smells, the storylines and especially the characters and he conveys this passion to his readers.

Game Time is a wonderful anthology of nearly 30 essays Angell has written during his 40 years as "sports-writer." They cover all aspects of the baseball season, many baseball personalities and the intricacies of the games. He is not just a poet who appreciates the aesthetic values of the sport, but he recognizes and discusses the strategies and skills as well as anyone. These is a great collection by one of the best baseball writers around and will provide many laughs and lessons to all baseball fans as well as people who simply love excellent non-fiction essays.

Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Reintroduction
Review: The only reason I took off a star is because...well, I have bathed in the warm waters of Roger Angell's baseball chronicling since the publication of his first such anthology, "The Summer Game," and I have bought every last one of the successor books ("Five Seasons," "Late Innings," "Season Ticket," and "Once More Around The Park"), and I really didn't need to see a lot of the essays contained in this volume all over again. Even if I think "Distance" is the absolute best and most humane essay you'll ever read about Bob Gibson, please: A third anthologising (it debuted in "Late Innings" and was recycled in "Once More Around The Park") was as excessive as some would consider a stolen base in the eighth inning when the thief's team was on the winning side of a 12-1 blowout.

But if you have never before approached even the edge of those waters, this is the book with which you want to begin; the editing and arranging of the material, appropriately enough into seasonal sections, is even better than "Once More Around The Park's" had been. Don't let my harrumphing about over-repetition of some choice essays deter you (I certainly didn't let it keep me from adding this to my library). If you are a newcomer to Mr. Angell's virtuosity (and if you are a newcomer, you should probably ask yourself where you've been all your life), from the loveliest book of baseball letters of the year. Peter Golenbock, in his oral history of the Boston Red Sox, called Mr. Angell "baseball's Homer," but Golenbock has it backward. With apologies to no one, Homer shall have to settle for having been ancient Greece's Roger Angell.