The sportswriting world lost an icon on Friday. Long-time baseball writer Roger Angell passed away at 101.
I can’t even begin to do the career of Angell justice (so read the obituaries at the New York Times and the New Yorker), but it’s simply awe-inspiring. He contributed his first piece to The New Yorker in 1944, and his last piece in 2020. His first piece about baseball for the publication came back in 1962, the year after the Mantle/Maris home run chase.
In 2014, Angell received the JG Taylor Spink Award (now known as the BBWAA Career Excellence Award), and the big shock is that it took until 2014 for him to be honored.
I think this tweet from a couple of years ago from The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler summed Angell up the best – the man saw a century of baseball. He was born before the Yankees played in, let alone won, their first World Series!
Roger Angell grew up seeing Babe Ruth walking around Manhattan. His stepfather was E.B. White. He began writing for The New Yorker during World War II. He's been alive for 27 Yankees World Series wins. A hero and an all-time great at bringing this game to life through his prose. https://t.co/8nNrsUagI2
— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) August 9, 2020
There’s not much more to say than that.