No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing
There are a handful of people I would love to have on as a guest for a Bookshelf Conversation, the podcast segment of this blog: James Earl Jones, Dennis Haysbert, John Thorn and, perhaps most of all, Roger Angell. There’s a sawbuck in it for anyone who can make that happen.
Angell published Let Me Finish
For the most part, this is a deep dive into the venerable scribe’s career as a writer of baseball stories, as opposed to a baseball writer. When Angell received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014, it was the first time the honor was given to someone who was not a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, men and women who worked for daily newspapers.
The opening and closing chapters of this slim volume are perhaps the most personal, dealing with his young life of semi-privilege and the encroaching sadness of old age. The rest covers his work at the New Yorker, penning such eloquent and elegant essays about the game, not so much as game-on-the-field reporting as Talmudic commentary.
As good as the work is, I’d rather read it first-hand and draw my own conclusions rather than have it spoon-fed to me. Still, No Place is a welcome discourse into the work of this literary baseball legend (or should that be baseball literary legend?).
Here’s a link to a number of videos featuring Angell and his acceptance speech in Cooperstown.
is available on Amazon.com,
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