Happy 100th birthday, Roger Angell

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Writer Roger Angell is our guest his week. Roger is best known for his writing and editing for The New Yorker and most notably wrote about his love of baseball. This week, in celebration of his 100th birthday, we revisit our 2016 interview with him. He shares stories about being a young kid in New York watching Babe Ruth play, which baseball players are the best talkers, editing fiction at The New Yorker. Plus he tells us about why he doesn't write about baseball as a pastime but rather as an experience of watching players grow and evolve.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:10.6	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:22.2	Roger Angel, the writer, just turned 100 years old.
0:27.7	That's inkin, 100.
0:30.0	Roger has contributed to the New Yorker since 1944.
0:35.2	He's mostly retired now.
0:37.2	Mostly.
0:38.4	He writes about a lot of stuff, primarily baseball.
0:41.5	He was also the longtime editor of the magazine's fiction section.
0:46.1	He was never really a sports writer, though he never had a column, he never followed a team.
0:51.3	Instead, he writes like a fan who's come to visit.
0:54.9	And no one has ever matched his ability to describe how it feels to love watching
0:59.8	a baseball game.
1:01.6	His writing has earned him a spot in the baseball hall of fame despite the fact that he
1:05.9	was not a member of the baseball writers association of America.
1:09.6	When I talked to him in 2016, he'd just written, This Old Man, a collection of stories and
1:14.6	essays.
1:15.6	At the time, he was a mere 95 years old.
1:19.4	Anyway, happy 100th birthday to Roger, the greatest baseball writer of all time.
1:24.8	One of my favorites in any genre.
1:27.4	Let's get into our conversation.
1:33.6	Welcome to Bullseye, Mr. Angel.
	...

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