Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. Roger Angel has written for the New Yorker for over

seven decades, and some of his most memorable essays have been about baseball. He never

played baseball professionally, but like a lot of kids, he grew up fantasizing about

one day being part of what prose affectionately called the show. He was actually still thinking

about it in his thirties. I had a dream that I walked out the door of our little house

in the country. He walked down the little tiny stream on a footbridge and then the

tangle of greens across a way that was a gravestone. And I pushed it aside and on it was my

birthday in 1920 and then the present year, which might have been 1953, let's say. And

the therapist said, what is that reminds you of those gravestones, those more cursed

ones for bygone players out in the center of Yankee Stadium. And then it came to me.

It was the end of my dreams of being a medially ball player. I had died. My baseball

play years were over. I never played baseball, but they were over. It's bullseye.

Coming up, I'll talk to Roger Angel about his writing and his new book, This Old Man.

He'll talk about baseball, not about scores and batting averages, but about the humanity

of the people who play the game. Joe Torrey, a great favor to mine. And it's one of his

last statements he was Yankee's were pushing him out. And he said, talking about his

players, and he said, this is not machinery out there. It's not blood that runs through

their veins. A wonderful thing.

The first I'll talk with the actor, Ia Cash. She recently wrapped up her second season

starring on the TV comedy, You're the Worst. It's her first starring role on TV and it

did come easy. There's a lot of nose before you get a yes.

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