{"id":1515,"date":"2008-12-31T07:01:33","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T07:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2009-09-30T20:04:04","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T19:04:04","slug":"game-time-a-baseball-companion-by-roger-angell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1515","title":{"rendered":"Game Time: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Harvest, 2004), 398 pages.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It stands to reason that British baseball fans would want to discover as many great baseball writers as possible. Buying a copy of ‘Game Time: A Baseball Companion’<\/em> should therefore be high on your list of things to do.<\/p>\n

During his career writing about baseball for The New Yorker<\/em> since 1962, Roger Angell has consistently proved to be one of the finest commentators on the game. This collection brings together essays and shorter \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctakes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 from that first year up until the Angels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 triumph over the Giants in the 2002 World Series. His prose is easy and enjoyable to read: elegant but never overly wordy; insightful but never condescending. Just as importantly, his simple love of the game is always at the heart of everything he writes.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Every piece of writing on display makes you appreciate the great game of baseball even more. As both Joe and I have a copy of this book, we thought the best way to honour the writing would be to concentrate on two pieces each, rather than to gloss over the whole collection. Joe writes about two of the shorter \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctakes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 first (the second actually being a\u00c2\u00a0collection of three written in different years), before I cover a couple of the essays.<\/p>\n

Takes: Digging up Willie<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although he does not state it in this short essay on Willie Mays\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 home-run number 501, Angell has a good chunk of outfield in his heart allocated to the legendary Giant. In the essay, the reader accompanies Angell on a hunt for details on a home-run that Mays, when asked to remember a favourite round-tripper, described as the only dramatic one he hit in his career (from a catalogue of 660).<\/p>\n

Angell has something similar to a ball in the dirt to work with, from Mays\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 answer:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home run against Claude Raymond, in the Astrodome. Somebody was on first, and it tied the game. Jim Davenport won it for us in the eleventh or twelfth inning. Raymond threw me thirteen fastballs, and I fouled them off. The ball went over the fence in left-center field. What year? You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to look that up. Ask Claude Raymond\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe probably knows it better than I do.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Angell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pre-Internet quest to find out more about this home-run leads him \u00e2\u20ac\u201c after several cases of mistaken identity (several four-baggers not quite fitting the description) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to number 501, although the description that he is given suggests that only four pitches were fouled off before the swing that did the damage.<\/p>\n

Curious about the discrepancy between the four foul-balls mentioned in this account and the\u00c2\u00a0thirteen described by Mays, Angell gets in contact with Raymond, the pitcher who served up number 501. Raymond confirms Mays\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 description, leaving Angell satisfied that he now has the correct details to publish in The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In wrapping up the case, Angell treats the reader to the fact that Mays hit home-runs in every inning up to the sixteenth, and then dryly quips: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Too bad none of them were dramatic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And then, right at the end of this story, comes a pleasant little twist sure to make any baseball fan want to smile. The twist works better after reading the actual essay, and that is what I strongly recommend you do.<\/p>\n

Takes: Three Petes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here, Angell joins together three short pieces on Pete Rose. The first, from 1981, consists mostly of quoted text and illustrates the supreme confidence that Rose had in his batting ability. The second piece, written after Rose\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s record-breaking hit number 4,192, on 11 September 1985, contrasts the media circus surrounding the breaking of Ty Cobb\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s record with the lack of attention given to Cobb passing Honus Wagner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s then record mark of 3,430 on 20 September 1923. The thorough and skilful treatment of Rose\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s record satisfied the statistical hunger I get any time that I read about one of the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greats.<\/p>\n

It is the third piece, however, that I was most interested, being written in 1999 following the naming of MLB\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s All-Century Team, 10 years after Rose signed an agreement to a life-time banishment from baseball for betting on the sport.<\/p>\n

What I wanted to know was what Angell, among the most intelligent of baseball writers that the game has ever known, thought about the prospects of Rose\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s admission to the Hall of Fame. It is not until the final paragraph that Angell makes it certain that he is pro-admission, while noting that if it ever happens it will be on the Commissioner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s terms. Having likened the way that Rose handled the scandal to Shoeless Joe coming out of the cornfield in Field of Dreams earlier in the essay, Angell signs off with the sentence:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do it, Pete, and we will come.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Scout<\/strong><\/p>\n

Depicting a baseball landscape in 1976 that had undergone rapid change, Angell finds that the humble baseball scout had remained the symbol of a forgotten time. Fast forward to 2003 and Michael Lewis could be found writing the same thing in Moneyball, only in a much less sympathetic tone.<\/p>\n

Angell clearly felt (feels?) a lot of warmth to the men who spend day after day travelling long distances for the game they love. Whereas Lewis revelled in the growing rise of statistical analysis driving the dinosaurs to extinction, Angell captured the quality of these baseball men at a time when the MLB Scouting Bureau was putting many of them out of jobs. Angell walked in the footsteps of the then Angels scout Ray Scarborough as he sought to bring life to the anonymous scouting reports produced by the Bureau on several top high school and college players shortly before that year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s amateur draft.<\/p>\n

We are taken into a world of strong friendships (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fraternity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, Scarborough explains), where years of hard work could go unnoticed to the general baseball fan yet were treasured by the men who devoted their lives to it. A life on the scouting road might be tough, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also full of characters and great stories that the scouts are always ready to share. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what really stands out about Ray and his colleagues: the willingness to pass on their considerable baseball knowledge to other people. After Scarborough succinctly explained the mechanics of a young hurler, Angell noted:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153all this was perfectly evident to me as soon as Ray pointed it out. I had the curious feeling that I was listening to a brilliant English instructor explicating some famous novel or play. I thought I had known some of the passages by heart \u00e2\u20ac\u201c known them almost too well \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but now I began to hear different rhythms and truths. An old text had become fresh and exciting again\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an essay that could have been written in 2006 rather than thirty years earlier and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a joy to read.<\/p>\n

The Distance<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of Angell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most famous essays, The Distance <\/em>is a revealing portrait of pitching legend Bob Gibson. Written five years after he had retired, Angell draws the reader\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attention to Gibson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greatness firstly by compiling the case through statistics (his seventeen strikeout performance against the Tigers in the 1968 World Series, his 1.12 earned-run average in the same year etc) and then through the gripping testimony of his teammates and opponents.<\/p>\n

After reading such compelling evidence, it seems strange that Angell was partly moved to meet Gibson because it was his first year of eligibility to the Hall of Fame and that he believed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153baseball up to now has never quite known what to make of Bob Gibson, and has slightly but persistently failed to pay him his full due as a player and a man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. How could his special talent cause such confusion? Well, people didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really know<\/em> Gibson, predominantly because he had no desire for them to know him.<\/p>\n

Gibson was a proud man, a black American who had grown up battling against racism, a fierce competitor whose focus was on winning baseball games. He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t waste any time on the mound and was never caught kidding around with opposing players. It was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153business\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to Gibson, not show business. For some people who watched him and, most specifically, the people who reported on him, this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough.<\/p>\n

Consequently, he makes for a fascinating subject. Angell uncovers the man behind the pitcher and what made him refuse to play the role of all-round \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsports hero\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 away from the mound. In doing so, he is able to explore more widely the demands placed on sportsmen. Angell states:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153it is my suspicion that both sportswriters and fans are increasingly resentful of the fame and adulation and immense wealth that are now bestowed so swiftly upon so many young professional athletes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, adding \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that there is indeed a wish to own them; to demand ceaseless, inhumanely repeated dazzling performances from them on the field, and to require absolute access to their private lives as well\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a position that Angell, someone who loves the pure pleasure of watching a ballgame and who does not seek to burden it with any greater moral, philosophical or spiritual meaning, calmly casts aside.<\/p>\n

The Distance<\/em> shows that Bob Gibson was too proud a man to create an artificial public persona; that this won him no favours during his career but is something we should admire as part of his strong-willed character in retrospect.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not many books deserve a 1,600 word review, but Game Time<\/em> surely does. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a book that you will go back to and pick up off the shelf at regular intervals and deserves a place in every baseball fan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collection.<\/p>\n

Have you read \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Game Time: A Baseball Companion”? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Can you recommend any other similar books? If so, let us know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Harvest, 2004), 398 pages. It stands to reason that British baseball fans would want to discover as many great baseball writers as possible. Buying a copy of ‘Game Time: A Baseball Companion’ should therefore be high on your list of things to do. During his career writing about baseball for The New Yorker since 1962, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[76,553],"class_list":["post-1515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-books","tag-book-reviews","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4923,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions\/4923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}