While I was doing research on Curt Flood up at the Hall of Fame library last week, I took the opportunity to look up some of my favorite baseball writers. Pat Jordan, Lee Allen and Ed Linn were just a couple I had time to get to. In Roger Angell’s file, I found a lengthy interview that appeared in a literary publication called “Writing on the Edge.” Conducted in July of 1993 by Jared Haynes, Angell talked about writing and baseball of course. Here are some words of wisdom then from one of the true masters of baseball writing:

Good writing is based on clear thinking, which is the hardest thing we have to do. Itís as plain as that. Itís hard to start to write because what you have to do is start to think. And not just think with the easy, up front part of your brain but with the deeper, back parts of the unconscious. The unconscious comes into writing in a powerful way.