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Roger Angell

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Author

The Resume

    (September 19, 1920-May 20, 2022)
    Born in New York City, New York
    Frequent contributor to The New Yorker
    Frequently wrote about baseball
    Essay collections include ‘The Stone Arbor and Other Stories’ (1960), ‘A Day in the Life of Roger Angell’ (1970), ‘The Summer Game’ (1972), ‘Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion’ (1977), ‘Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion’ (1988), and ‘Let Me Finish’ (2006)
    Commentator in Ken Burns’ ‘Baseball’ (1994)

Why he might be annoying:

    His divorced mother failed to tell him about her marriage to E.B. White; he learned about it from a relative who had read about the wedding in Walter Winchell’s newspaper column.
    His mother Katharine was The New Yorker’s first fiction editor (and stepfather White was a frequent contributor), leading to accusations of nepotism.
    He disliked his nickname ‘the poet laureate of baseball.’
    He professed to be a fan of both the New York Yankees and their rivals the Boston Red Sox. (A New Yorker colleague noted, ‘In anyone else, this would have been unforgivable.’)

Why he might not be annoying:

    He served in the US Army Air Forces during World War II.
    He had a phenomenal memory and could recall the caption for every New Yorker cartoon.
    He was the first recipient of the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing (2010).
    He was the first recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for meritorious baseball writer who was not a member of the organization giving the Award, the Baseball Writers Association of America (2014).
    He was described as ‘improbably trim and youthful’ in his 90s, when he was still a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 119 Votes: 52.94% Annoying