Part two of Roger Angell's 15 year written love affair with baseball...this book picks up where "The Summer Game" left off and doesn't miss a beat, covering the 1972 through 1976 seasons. Each chapter has all the classic written/observed anecdotes that Angell is famous for, as well as expert detailed coverage of the game(s) and the ever-discouraging front-office activities that the 70's were famous for (the Reserve Clause, the advent of Free Agency...etc). Still, Angell's ability to write insightful and elegant observations are what make this and The Summer Game standout and really makes all other baseball writing pale by comparison. For this book, he also adds something different when he takes on small projects such as following a Major League scout around the country, visiting with three Detroit Tiger fanatics and detailing the almost tragic rise and fall of Steve Blass, the Pittsburgh Pirate hero from the 1971 World Series. Each of these off-normal stories essentially "tells" itself, but Angell frames each in his own inimitable style that really defines "story-telling". I have such high regard for his writing that I wish he'd take on other projects (like history writing in general), as I'm sure that he'd excel there too (of course, being in his 80's probably has a lot to do with which projects he chooses to undertake). I read recently that Angell hates being called the "Poet Laureat" of baseball writing, but I can't think of a finer term for so marvelous a writer. This book should be combined with "Summer Game" and re-issued as a single volume for future writers to use as a model for taking a subject and turn it into expert storytelling. Highest recommendation!

Roger Angell's love for the game flows throughout this fine book. Every bit of his prose is a joy to read, and the tales are enchanting. Covering five seasons, Angell brings to life the ebb and flow of the game and the people who make it great - from the players, the coaches, the management personnel and not the least, the fans.

If you want to read a book that captures what baseball means, pick up this one. You won't be disappointed!

Perhaps there is a quibble here.maybe the summer game is the finest baseball book ever written.Roger Angell is a poet[appropriate for e.b. white's stepson],and the finest chronichler of the game. he is a FAN,not a beat reporter,and is a grown up, far more interested in the beauty on the field than the foibles off.From the opening essay on the ball itself,to a wonderful essay on three detroit tiger fans,this is lovely. HOW COULD THE PUBLISHERS LET THIS GO OUT OF PRINT? With the unfettered garbage [george will's pompous assinine writings come to mind] that is baseball publishing,allowing this to languish out of print is sad, if not a crime.

This collection of essays is such a fine book; it deserves a much better commentary than it currently has here. And given the times we live in, its subject matter is particularly timely for American readers -- the period of history leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the early years of the war effort -- all told from the point of view of a thoughtful writer on a small farm in Maine.

White had moved there with his wife and young son from New York, where he'd been writing for The New Yorker, and took up country living, turning his attention to the annual round of the seasons, farm work, the nearby seaside, and the company of independent rural people. Most of the essays in this collection were written and published monthly in Harpers from July 1938 to January 1943. In them, there is White's awareness of the ominous threat of fascism emerging in Europe, as well as the vulnerability that Americans felt as they found themselves facing prolonged armed conflict with powerful enemies. These were dark days, and they provide a constant undertone in these otherwise upbeat essays about rural and small-town life.

And they are upbeat, celebrating the pleasures and gentle ironies of daily life with a few side trips into the world beyond -- the birth of a lamb, paying taxes, farm dogs, hay fever, raising chickens, Sunday mornings, radio broadcasts, civil defense drills, a visit to Walden pond, a day at the World's Fair, and unrealistic Hollywood portrayals of the pastoral. There is also here his famous essay "Once More to the Lake."

In many ways, the world he writes about is gone forever. But it's a world whose spirit remains at the heart of the national identity -- participatory democracy, individualism, citizenship, self-discovery, and self-reliance. Reading these essays, while they are often about seemingly trivial matters, you sense White's deepening faith in the American Experiment -- a belief in America as a work in progress.

And, of course, there is the famous White style, both simple and elegant. Its language, sentence structure, and movement of thought convey both sharpness of mind and generosity of spirit, in a manner that looks and sounds easy, but it is very hard to imitate. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the WWII homefront, the essay as a literary form, and a curiosity about rural life before farm subsidies and agribusiness.

Understanding E.B. White is not an easy task. He was a reserved man, very straightforward in his writing and simple in nature. However, White found that he was able to express himself with his writing, and none of his books is a more direct window into his soul than "One Man's Meat." Written over the course of White's later years of living on a Maine farm, this book contains witty accounts of geographic novelty, reminiscences on the promise of youth, and powerful insights into the little things in life that can make all the difference. No reader of E.B. White can gain a full knowledge of what the man was all about without having thoroughly digested this book.

For one who aspires to write well--the most delicious book I've ever read. The words "witty" and "sharp" come to mind, but poorly describe White and his work. Maybe, no words do with any degree of accuracy and right praise.

Maybe the best writer that I've ever read and not just about baseball...I must concur with the other reviewers that it's scandelous that this and other Roger Angell books are out of print, especially with all the sub-par writing that is on the market today. Mr. Angell's ability to craft details into a much larger story and tell it with humour and keen insight are amazing to me. Chapter after chapter of this book are combined into one long pleasing account from a fan's perspective that leaves you wishing that it would never end. More than just a season-by-season run-down, Angell provides his views with a unique perspective for each season that goes beyond mere sports reporting and seems to provide a theme that is clever, humerous and poignant. This should be read by every baseball fan to see what real sports-writing is like and I think that you'll agree that all other sports commentary pales by comparison. Highest recommendation.

The subtitle of this book tells it all: "Roger Angell on baseball." The articles collected in "The Summer Game" first appeared in "The New Yorker" from 1962-72. Angell is not only a first-rate writer but a true fan of the game. He writes about the rise of California baseball, the wonderful world of expansion including the comical and agonizing sufferings of the Amazin' Mets, the fall of the mighty New York Yankees, baseball in French (Montreal's Expos), baseball indoors (the Houston Astrodome), baseball in the spring, baseball during the winter hot-stove league, and the Miracle Mets of 1969. Many of the articles focus on the World Series, so fans of the Dodgers, Cardinals and Orioles will enjoy their double triumphs within this period, while the Tigers and Pirates will remember their classic seven-game Series, and the Red Sox fans will have to endure with having come ever so close. There is humor in these writings, but there is also affection, so when Angell expresses his bitterness over the arrogance and greed that threatened to overwhelm the game he loves he speaks for all of us. Yes, it is insane that the writing of Roger Angell or Red Smith or any of the other great sportswriters of the last century are out of print. They do not need to be preserved on the internet, they need to be in print on paper.

The fact that this book (and Mr. Angell's other remarkable books about baseball) is out of print disturbs me on two levels. As a baseball fan, I have found these books to be an invaluable source of comfort during the long winter months when our game goes into hybernation. As a reader, I have found in these volumes beautiful writing and keen insight, something that is so often lacking in what passes for journalism today. Mr. Angell (longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker) writes about baseball as a fan, and he does so for fans. Real fans - those of us who recognize that a double and a single are preferable to a home run, those that marvel at a right fielder's gorgeous one-hop throw to third to nip the sliding runner, those that hurt just a little bit during rain delays. If, by some wild stretch of the imagination the publisher of the Summer Game (I don't remember who it was right off) reads this, I think a single collection of the best of Angell's baseball writings is in order - if not a re-pressing of all.

Without a doubt, the best book on baseball I have ever written - insightful, funny - an all around gem.

As the 'rules' in this iconic book take up only 14 pages, it continually amazes me how often I can find the answer to a grammar or punctuation guestion within those pages. It doesn't cover everything, and some of the 'rules' are of course changing with the passage of time - but if a wannabe writer can't afford a whole bookcase of tomes on How to Write, then this is the one he or she should buy.
Beyond those 14 pithy pages, however, are another 100 or so that extend the value of the book immeasurably: Principles of Composition, Commonly Misused Words, and perhaps the most valuable: An Approach to Style, which gives excellent advice along the lines of Do not overwrite, Avoid qualifiers, Don't over-explain, Avoid adverbs, Avoid dialect, Don't inject opinion, and tons of others.
When all's said and done, however, one of the very best parts is a wonderful essay by the inimitable EB White himself - the Introduction, which serves as a perfect example of all that the rest of the small book preaches: write concisely, clearly, and well, and say something worthwhile.
Other books for writers to consider: Bird by Bird, On Writing, and Writing Down the Bones.

I was looking for a book with basic rules of english grammar to improve the presentation in my recent report and forthcoming thesis. Something that had all in one place, was concise, to the point and no novel-likeness. Strunk & White was the prescription. It has everything a writer needs in terms of language and some aspects of style and presentation. It speaks of the obvious but precious gems which people tend to forget over time. I am impressed with the organisation of the book. What I was really looking for was, Elements of usage and An approach to Style. I recommend this for students planning to write reports, thesis, term papers or any sort of writing that needs to be crisp and clear.The Fine Art of Technical Writing by Carol Rosenblum Perry would be an excellent along with the "little" book for students. It's a necessity if you are in the academia, it's a great aid otherwise.

When I write a book I use only a handful of reference tools: dictionary, thesaurus, Gregg's Reference Handbook, Writers Market, and the Elements of Style. Strunk and White is a wonderfully-written, extraordinarily concise tool that pays homage to classic high-end English. It takes language insight to make this prediction in 1979: "By the time this paragraph makes print, uptight... rap, dude, vibes, copout, and funky will be the words of yesteryear." The book begins with eleven "Elementary Rules of Usage," and then continues with eleven more "Elementary Rules of Composition," and eleven "Matters of Form." Each is presented as a brief statement followed by another sentence or two of explanation and a few clarifying examples. This amazing compilation fills only thirty-eight pages, yet covers ninety percent of good writing fundamentals. My favorite section is Chapter IV, a twenty-seven-page, alphabetical listing of commonly misused words and expressions. Here's a trade secret: when my manuscript is "done," I then turn to this chapter and use my word processor's Find function to study every instance of all these problematic words and phrases. I never fail to find errors this way. Many great writers are so only because they've learned to make use of the best available tools. The end of the book contains an essay on "An Approach to Style" with a list of twenty-one "Reminders." Those who fight the apparently-natural tendency to go against these recommendations succeed as writers. Those who don't, fail. It's that simple. The single drawback of The Elements of Style is that it's too concise; it does not stand alone as an all-encompassing tutorial or reference guide. Many readers will seek other sources for more in-depth explanation of style elements. Despite that, it easily replaces ten pounds of other reference material. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

The only reason I took off a star is because...well, I have bathed in the warm waters of Roger Angell's baseball chronicling since the publication of his first such anthology, "The Summer Game," and I have bought every last one of the successor books ("Five Seasons," "Late Innings," "Season Ticket," and "Once More Around The Park"), and I really didn't need to see a lot of the essays contained in this volume all over again. Even if I think "Distance" is the absolute best and most humane essay you'll ever read about Bob Gibson, please: A third anthologising (it debuted in "Late Innings" and was recycled in "Once More Around The Park") was as excessive as some would consider a stolen base in the eighth inning when the thief's team was on the winning side of a 12-1 blowout.

But if you have never before approached even the edge of those waters, this is the book with which you want to begin; the editing and arranging of the material, appropriately enough into seasonal sections, is even better than "Once More Around The Park's" had been. Don't let my harrumphing about over-repetition of some choice essays deter you (I certainly didn't let it keep me from adding this to my library). If you are a newcomer to Mr. Angell's virtuosity (and if you are a newcomer, you should probably ask yourself where you've been all your life), from the loveliest book of baseball letters of the year. Peter Golenbock, in his oral history of the Boston Red Sox, called Mr. Angell "baseball's Homer," but Golenbock has it backward. With apologies to no one, Homer shall have to settle for having been ancient Greece's Roger Angell.

If you are familiar with past baseball books of Roger Angell you know you are in for another treat with his latest offering. Part of the book includes passages from past books, but, at least to me, it doesn't detract from this book at all. A good part of the book covers recent playoffs and World Series including 2002 and if you followed the games during the past several years, these parts of the book will have additional meaning to you. A lengthy section on former Cardinals' fireballer Bob Gibson and a visit with Smokey Joe Wood while viewing a college game between Yale and St. Johns with Ron Darling and Frank Viola matching up against one another are included as is a section on broadcaster Tim McCarver "There's a lahn drahve!", and another on a scouting mission with California Angels scout Ray Scarborough. Some of these offerings go back to the early 1960's until through the year 2002. In describing playoff and World Series games, Angell doesn't merely recite game facts as to who got hits and scored runs. He has a knack for making the reader feel he is there and tells the story with colorful prose. Here are a few examples: "The hankie hordes were in full cry at the Metrodome, where the World Series began." "We repaired to Milwaukee, where, on a cold and blustery evening in the old steel-post park, County Stadium, Willie McGee staged his party." Regarding Dennis Eckersley: "His eyes burning like flashlights as he spoke." "Luis Sojo, a Venezuelan, is thirty-four but looks as if he'd put on a much older guy's body that morning by mistake." After working on a screwball in high school to imitate Giants' pitcher Carl Hubbell, Angell said, "I began walking around school corridors with my pitching hand turned palm outward, like Carl Hubbell's, but nobody noticed." I could go on and on and on with colorful tidbits found in the book, but I don't want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, if you buy this book you are in for a treat. Don't speed read it. This isn't a book to be gulped. It is like a Godiva chocolate bar. This book is to be savored.

Nothing But You: Love Stories from the New Yorker ed. by Roger Angell. Not recommended.

Earlier in 2002, I had read Victorian Love Stories: An Oxford Anthology edited by Kate Flint, a wonderful, imaginative anthology that covers the gamut of love, from earnest and longing to the impulsive and painful, from gritty realism to the fantastic and the supernatural. I had had Nothing But You for a while, and it seemed natural to read it as a follow-up to the Victorian anthology. This proved to be a mistake; the contrast between the two highlights the shallowness of the New Yorker stories.

There are a few gems, such as "Marito in Città" by John Cheever, "The Diver" by V. S. Pritchett, "Eyes of a Blue Dog" with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magic surrealism, "The Kugelmass Episode" with Woody Allen's characteristic offbeat humour and angst, and "Here Come the Maples" with a touch of irony by John Updike. One story by a lesser-known writer, "In the Gloaming" by Alice Elliott Dark, stands out for beautifully conveying the tragedy of loss and alienation, not through death, but through the chains and barriers that life erects to prevent insight and truer love between the mother and son and between them and the distant, unloving father. Impending death finally begins to break down those barriers and reveal the humanity of mother and son to one another.

For the most part, however, these highlights are overwhelmed by the blandness of the rest of the selections. Somehow, this collection about "love" seems to miss many of love's elements-affection, depth of feeling, passion (depth of emotion of any kind), perception, dedication. Instead, many of the stories read as pointless, plodding, surface tellings of things that happen, with an amazing attention to mundane and unrelated detail, and revolve around featureless, interchangeable characters with no depth and no interest. "The Nice Restaurant" by Mary Gaitskill, with its generic yuppie characters Evan and Laurel, their meaningless relationship, and endless detail such as "Evan picked at his pork-chop bone. He downed his glass of wine" and "Laurel shifted in her chair" that is meant to convey the flat emotions of these flat people contrasts badly with the underlying passions and conflicts subtly portrayed in Lucy Clifford's "The End of Her Journey" and Hubert Crackenthorpe's "A Conflict of Egoisms" from the Victorian anthology. Later, the same cardboard characters, with different names, will appear in "Ocean Avenue" by Michael Chabon, where, nine yawning pages of yuppie angst over coffee later, the predictable happens.

How modern authors have reduced one of humanity's deepest, most elemental, and disturbing emotions into a painfully superficial detailing of everyday functions is, perhaps, a reflection of modern love and life. I would like not to think so, however. I would like to think that we are still capable of passion, even cartoon characters like Evan and Laurel and Chabon's California counterparts, Lazar and Suzette.

At the end of the Victorian collection, I felt elated, disturbed, empathic, inspired, and despairing. At the end of the New Yorker collection, I felt nothing but bored.

Diane L. Schirf, 3 November 2002.

This is a really excellent book and should please anyone who likes short story collections and especially fiction from The New Yorker. Although I quibbled with the inclusion of certain stories and didn't like every one, it's hard for me to imagine a much better, broader, or satisfying range of stories on love than the one displayed in this volume. The book mixes many respected and famous authors with less established, newer ones, and I honestly can't say that the stories by either set of authors are better than the others.

My three favorite stories were Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic "Eyes of a Blue Dog," John Cheever's previously anthologized "Marito in Citta," and Alice Munro's recent "The Jack Randa Hotel." Each of these stories, like most of the best stories in this book, works so well because it conveys the intensity and idealism and adventure of love but is also grounded in the concrete, mundane details of everyday life. Other standouts include Alice Elliott Dark's recent but already classic "In the Gloaming," Katherine Keiny's charming, Jane Austenish "How to Give the Wrong Impression," R. Prawer Jhabvala's culture-clashing "The Man with the Dog," Bobbie Ann Mason's hilarious and moving "Love Life," John O'Hara's piercing "How Old, How Young," Raymond Carver's Edgar Allan Poe-imitating "Blackbird Pie," and Mary Grimm's probing "We."

As the editor, Roger Angell, and other reviewers here have noted, the book is not all full of happy endings and is not even always about passionate love affairs per se, but the broad theme of love is the perfect motif to carry along a short fiction anthology, and this theme keeps you moving through the stories just as love in real life keeps you moving through the everyday ups and downs of being with a romantic partner. One of the best short story anthologies I've read in a while.

The New Yorker publishes great writers, and great writers are worth reading. This collection, by focusing on a single theme, shows us familiar names often writing on an unfamiliar topic (love), which is always intriguing if occasionally disappointing. The quality of the stories varies but is usually quite high.

It's hard to classify "A Pitcher's Story" either as a straight sports autobiography/hagiography, or as a classic Roger Angell essay collection. This, the David Cone story, is Angell's first baseball "bio", so to speak, and it helps to have a strong working knowledge of David Cone's career before you begin. And yet if you go in expecting 300 pages of nothing but Cone, you may have trouble navigating Angell's short trips and side steps around the game he loves so much.

Angell's biggest strength, at least as I've always read him, lies in his descriptions of games and players. David Cone started some of the more memorable ballgames of the past decade, and Angell's game summaries are magnetic. I like the poetic way in which he visualizes players. Even the cameo by former Cone teammate Terry Leach becomes grand opera in the Angell tradition ("[he] made right-handed batters bend and weave like matadors.").

Equally fascinating are Angell's musings on the Yankees' frustrating 2000 season, and his attempts to solve a knotty baseball trivia question involving certain members of the 400 homer club (key hint: Cone is not a member).

Angell also loves technical descriptions, of the way pitches break and of the way Cone's right arm functions (or malfunctions). These are the paragraphs that held less of my interest -- but that's Angell's key asset. He looks at baseball from every angle, and writes something for everyone. You may even find yourself, like Angell, reaching for a baseball to see if you, too, can throw the Laredo.

David Cone is lucky to have found such a biographer as this. His career and his mentality deserve more than the standard cut-and-paste job, and this is a book to be proud of. Best, it's a loving book about the 2000 Yankees, as written by a Mets fan. One feels Angell's turmoil as Piazza pops up to second base to end the fifth inning of Game 4 (Cone fans know of what I speak), and yet this out is the book's climax, a moment of quiet triumph.

I wish "A Pitcher's Story" had received better ratings. It's as absorbing a baseball book as has been written this year, and instilled in me a craving to rush back to my long-untouched tapes of the 1996 World Series, when Coney was king. It's a book best read out loud, perhaps with the radio on and tuned in to a Boston Red Sox game this season. Cone fans wil know of what I speak.

I loved this book. If you are familiar with Roger Angell's baseball essays that appear regularly in the New Yorker, you know his love of the game and the people who play it. This book traces the year of David Cone, a very good pitcher, who just happens to have probably the worst year of his career. To the author and subjects credit, they go on with the project anyway, and it makes for a much different book than the author was planning on. You must pay attention while reading, because the author is often going back to the past of David Cone, shedding light on how he became a successful pitcher, and the ups and downs of his career, and in his life. It is a must read for anyone who enjoys great writing, and loves baseball. I personally would love to see an update on what happened to David after he joined the Red Sox, and what he's doing now that he's no longer in baseball. Thanks, Roger!

David Cone once said he's a person who things happen to in life. You have to agree with him after reading about his life and career in "A Pitcher's Story."

Roger Angell is one of the more literary sports writers, and although he has chosen a friend as the subject of his latest work, he is honest and unprejudiced throughout the book.

As a lifelong Yankee fan I first became intrigued with Coney when he pitched for the Mets. It was exciting to have him with my beloved Yankees, and what a contribution he made during the years he was here - a no-hitter after coming back from his surgery for an aneurysm, his post-season gems, his perfect game.

His clubhouse role couldn't be matched. He was a stand-up team leader who could always be relied on for an honest assessment of situations on and off the field.

If you've followed David's career, or are just a casual baseball fan, you'll find yourself rooting for his success throughout the account of his hellacious last season with the Yanks. His last appearance in the World Series against his former team, the Mets, was a fittingly dramatic ending to his years in New York.

This book is a wonderful tribute to one of the most interesting boys of summer.