Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion

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Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion
Season Ticket book cover.jpg
AuthorRoger Angell
Cover artistPaul Bacon
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Houghton Mifflin Company
Publication date
1988
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages406
ISBN 0-395-38165-7
796.3570973

Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion is a 1988 book written by Roger Angell, [1] whose previous works include Five Seasons, Late Innings, and the New York Times best-seller, The Summer Game. [2] Angell is considered one of the country's premier baseball writers. [3] [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Summary

Season Ticket is a collection of articles written by Angell for The New Yorker magazine between 1984 and 1987. The articles are presented as 15 chapters in the book starting with a 1987 article that discuses different aspects of the game. Successive articles, as explained in the book's preface, generally follow the 1984-1987 chronology except where Angell believed that an out of order approach improved the book's logical flow. [1]

Reviews

Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion was favorably reviewed by critics, [3] [8] [9] who equally praised both Angell’s understanding and explanation of baseball as well as his ability to create some of the country’s best prose. [4] An example from the book was cited by several reviewers: [10] [11]

Baseball is not life itself, although the resemblance keeps coming up. Old fans, if they're anything like me, can't help noticing how cunningly our game replicates the larger schedule, with its beguiling April optimism; the cheerful roughhouse of June ... and then the abrupt running-down of autumn, when we wish for--almost demand--a prolonged and glittering final adventure just before the curtain. – excerpt from Chapter 1: La Vida

Other comments from critics include,

As one of the game's delectable accessories, his prose ranks up there with Vin Scully's voice and Gulden's mustard. Unlike the daily newspaper writers he admires, Angell has the luxury of time and space, which meshes nicely with a sport that has no clock and foul lines that extend to infinity. His first collection, 1972's best-selling The Summer Game, has been called the "essential" volume on the sport; subsequent collections, 1977's Five Seasons and 1982's Final Innings, have also won raves. His prose, however, has the grace of Mays and the charm of Stengel: "One begins to see at last that the true function of the Red Sox may be not to win but to provide New England authors with a theme, now that guilt and whaling have gone out of style." [2]

... Angell's prose is like a sunny afternoon in the bleachers at Wrigley Field or Fenway Park: filled with wonder and good cheer and the warm-all-over-feeling of baseball's - and we're talking the game of baseball, not the industry - of baseball's simple pleasure. [12]

One critic, writing for the Orlando Sentinel , faulted Angell for excessive praise of players and a failure to discuss drug use and the public perception of some baseball players as "lazy" and "overpaid" athletes. [13]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Angell, Roger. Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
  2. 1 2 Shriver, Jerry (April 12, 1988). "Angell's writing reflects pulse of game". USA Today. sec. C, p. 4.
  3. 1 2 Conarroe, Joel (March 20, 1988). "Ode on a Rainbow Slider". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  4. 1 2 Fuller, Richard (April 7, 1989). "Roger Angell On The Sport Of America". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  5. ↑ Kettmann, Steve (August 29, 2000). "Roger Angell". Salon.com. Archived from the original on January 13, 2009. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  6. ↑ Smith, Chris (May 6, 2006). "Influences: Roger Angell". New York Magazine. Archived from the original on August 6, 2016. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  7. ↑ Coleman, Dave (May 23, 2012). "Some Great Books on Baseball–My Starting Nine". Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  8. ↑ Italie, Hillel (July 30, 1988). "Beyond the Boys of Summer Roger Angell Hits Another Run with Season Ticket". Philadelphia Daily News. p. 23.
  9. ↑ Brosnan, Jim (March 27, 1988). "Roger Angell: A Perfect Pitch for Baseball". Book World. The Washington Post.
  10. ↑ Dretzka, Gary (April 3, 1988). "Spring, and an Old Fan's Fancy Lightly Turns: Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion by Roger Angell". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
  11. ↑ Schnedler, Jack (April 3, 1988). "A 'Season Ticket' of Baseball Delights". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 15.
  12. ↑ Fountain, Charles (April 20, 1988). "The perennial 8-year-old at the big-leaguer's knee; Season Ticket, by Roger Angell". The Christian Science Monitor.
  13. ↑ Hodges, Sam (April 10, 1988). "Season Ticket Subs Baseball P.r. For Rbis". The Orlando Sentinel. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
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