By Christopher DeRosa

Roger Angell, Game Time: A Baseball Companion (2003)

Essays from the ’60s to now. As Richard Ford says in the introduction, Angell is not a baseball romanticist, and itís true heís too light on his feet to be labeled a sentimentalist, but he does write with great affection for the game, in an adult voice that never takes itself too seriously. This collection features many examples of his strengths: the eye for the telling detail, the felicitous turns of phrase, and the sweet wrap-ups. I read him to remember, rather than to learn, but I learned some things too. Check out this description, from the 1980 essay “Distances:”

Gibsonís pitch flashed through the strike zone with a unique, upward-moving, right-to-left sail that snatched it away from a right handed batter or caused it to jump up and in at a left-handed swinger