Customer Reviews

The Summer Game

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The subtitle of this book tells it all: "Roger Angell on baseball." The articles collected in "The Summer Game" first appeared in "The New Yorker" from 1962-72. Angell is not only a first-rate writer but a true fan of the game. He writes about the rise of California baseball, the wonderful world of expansion including the comical and agonizing sufferings of the Amazin' Mets, the fall of the mighty New York Yankees, baseball in French (Montreal's Expos), baseball indoors (the Houston Astrodome), baseball in the spring, baseball during the winter hot-stove league, and the Miracle Mets of 1969. Many of the articles focus on the World Series, so fans of the Dodgers, Cardinals and Orioles will enjoy their double triumphs within this period, while the Tigers and Pirates will remember their classic seven-game Series, and the Red Sox fans will have to endure with having come ever so close. There is humor in these writings, but there is also affection, so when Angell expresses his bitterness over the arrogance and greed that threatened to overwhelm the game he loves he speaks for all of us. Yes, it is insane that the writing of Roger Angell or Red Smith or any of the other great sportswriters of the last century are out of print. They do not need to be preserved on the internet, they need to be in print on paper.

Pure chance -- and luck -- brought me to Roger Angell's books. I was shopping for baseball titles as gifts, and clicked on Summer Game in the search results. First, I am a literature student, who loves good writing. Second, I am a huge baseball fan. Third, I'm a girl. On the basis of previous reviews, I purchased Summer Game and Five Seasons, for me AND for my step-father. From the very first page I was blown away. Angell's vocabulary is tremendous; his use of metaphor phenomenal. Baseball really is poetry. I've had several eyebrows raised in my direction on the train as I laugh out loud at his descriptions of players, fans, owners, botched plays, you name it. Nothing and nobody escapes his notice. A bonus for me is suspense: most of these essays pre-date my arrival on the planet by a good 5 years, so I'm too young to know the outcome of a particular World Series or playoff round. Within 2 days, I'd ordered the rest of Angell's baseball books on amazon. They will join the complete works section of my collection, which includes Shakespeare and Jane Austen -- to name a few! Don't hesitate to buy these books for yourself, or for a friend. You'll heartily enjoy them!

The fact that this book (and Mr. Angell's other remarkable books about baseball) is out of print disturbs me on two levels. As a baseball fan, I have found these books to be an invaluable source of comfort during the long winter months when our game goes into hybernation. As a reader, I have found in these volumes beautiful writing and keen insight, something that is so often lacking in what passes for journalism today. Mr. Angell (longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker) writes about baseball as a fan, and he does so for fans. Real fans - those of us who recognize that a double and a single are preferable to a home run, those that marvel at a right fielder's gorgeous one-hop throw to third to nip the sliding runner, those that hurt just a little bit during rain delays. If, by some wild stretch of the imagination the publisher of the Summer Game (I don't remember who it was right off) reads this, I think a single collection of the best of Angell's baseball writings is in order - if not a re-pressing of all.

Maybe the best writer that I've ever read and not just about baseball...I must concur with the other reviewers that it's scandelous that this and other Roger Angell books are out of print, especially with all the sub-par writing that is on the market today. Mr. Angell's ability to craft details into a much larger story and tell it with humour and keen insight are amazing to me. Chapter after chapter of this book are combined into one long pleasing account from a fan's perspective that leaves you wishing that it would never end. More than just a season-by-season run-down, Angell provides his views with a unique perspective for each season that goes beyond mere sports reporting and seems to provide a theme that is clever, humerous and poignant. This should be read by every baseball fan to see what real sports-writing is like and I think that you'll agree that all other sports commentary pales by comparison. Highest recommendation.

There are some great baseball writers. Roger Kahn and Pat Jordan come to mind. Roger Angell is the very best of them all. This book is as much a part of my youth as family vacations. I have read this book numerous times, often just picking up random pages and reading for hours until sleep overtook me. There is something about New York City, the 1950s, and the Brooklyn Dodgers that contributed to the axiom that the best sportswriting is baseball writing. Angell is it, in its purest form. Jaques Barzun, a French writer, visited America around the turn of the century to discover what de Toqueville had found some 70 years earlier. Barzun concluded that, "In order to know America, you have to know baseball." To a current generation of young baseball enthusisasts who want to grasp what an older generation felt about this game, I recommend "The Summer Game" above all others. "Five Seasons" might be next, but "The Summer Game" is the best of the lot. It carries forward from Angell's 1950s experiences, and is part of his reportage for The New Yorker. Somehow he infuses the high art literacy necessary for a publication of this sort with the most lyrical, dead-on anlaysis of baseball ever. He starts with the 1962 Mets, and covers them over several Casey Stengel Polo Grounds seasons. No description ever conveys the wackiness of those lovable losers better, or the old-style devotion of New York fans of the by-gone era. This is the Brooklyn Dodger contingent transferred to Polo and Shea. Angell covers the '67 Red Sox, the '68 World Series (McClain vs Gibson overshadowed by Lolich), the Amazin' Mets, the Bay Area in their season of two division champs (1971), and other events, always including the World Series' played between '62 and '71. His writing about Dodger Stadium and Dodger fans in 1966 demonstrates the best of the "new age" Los Angeleno baseball enthusiasts, the modernists if you will. It describes vividly how an era has turned. He paints a picture of a beautiful new stadium bathed in Califrnia sunlight that is pure romanticism. To a young California reader, as I once was, it was the most perfect imagery.

STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
STWRITES@AOL.COM

Incredibly lyrical, insightful, moving and thought-provoking book, and apparently becoming a forgotten gem. Kahn and Halbertsam are popular, but they aren't even in Angell's league (only Boswell is). Part baseball chronicle, part social commentary, part comedy, part tragedy, and always full of love for the game and its fans--this one should be treasured and preserved. Even though he wrongly didn't think much of the Astrodome, I forgive him.

A collection of baseball stories that appeared in 'The New Yorker' magaizine in the 1960's following popular teams of the day, at one point we see where a ballplayer says,"I was with the NAACP before it became camp." Wow! I was able to ask the player when he was on the radio one time, very informative.

This is the only one of Angell's books in which his focus on New York teams is not grating -- largely because the Mets won the Series during the era of this work. As always, his observations of baseball are spot on.

Angell is a terrifically gifted writer, and this book is majestic in its description and accounts of baseball in the late sixties and early 70's. The book is a collection of shorter pieces and musings of different events and topics relevant to the era. The last section, The Interior Stadium, is among my favorite his. Those that like this book will like them all, but if you have yet to try him out, I suggest you start here.

Due to popular demand, this book is now back in print and available again. Enjoy.