This weekend, the Baseball Hall of Fame is having one of its better induction ceremonies. Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas, Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa, and Joe Torre are all getting bronze plaques.
But one other person is getting inducted, thanks to the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sports writing.
That's Roger Angell, of the New Yorker.
He's the first recipient of the award who was not a "beat" writer, and thus not a member of the Baseball Writers of America Association. His many essays have been collected in best-selling books like The Summer Game (1972), Five Seasons (1977), Late Innings (1982), Season Ticket (1988), Once More Around the Park (1991), A Pitcher’s Story (2001) and Game Time (2003).
His first piece appeared in 1962, when his editor told him to go to Spring Training and write something on baseball. Not knowing anything about the game at that time, he instead wrote about the old guys who sat in the stands behind home plate.
One of his most famous pieces appeared in the July 20, 1981 issue. In "The Web of the Game", Angell is watching a Yale - St. John's baseball game where the starting pitchers were future big league stars Ron Darling and Frank Viola. His companion in the stands was Red Sox pitching legend "Smoky" Joe Wood (won 3 games in the 1912 World Series).
The one I remember the most is "On the Ball", where he starts off describing the baseball as a physical object and how it seems deliberately designed to be thrown as hard as possible. He then goes into descriptions of the many ways in which it can be thrown - fastball, curve, slider....