In March, 1944, The New Yorker published a very short story called “Three Ladies in the Morning.” The author’s byline, which came at the end of the piece in those days, was “Cpl. Roger Angell.” Between then and now, a blink of an eye, that same corporal became a generalissimo, a writer, and an editor supremo. And, on September 19th, we’ll put a hundred candles on his cake. Happy birthday, Rog!
Roger’s accomplishment as a writer and his contributions to The New Yorker have been wondrously wide-ranging. As the magazine’s fiction editor, he nurtured talents as varied as William Trevor, Ann Beattie, and Donald Barthelme. As our birthday mini-anthology makes plain, he is an every-position player. Over the decades, he has published light verse, palindromes, humor pieces, Talk pieces, Profiles, short stories, book reviews, and personal essays. He was also, for a stint, the fill-in movie critic at The New Yorker, instantly becoming the favorite of the famously grumpy director Jean-Luc Godard.
Above all, Roger Angell is best known as the bard of baseball; he was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, in 2014—alongside his pal and source Joe Torre. He had a long career in the press box. At around the time the Beatles were still playing the Cavern Club, Roger set off for Florida to cover his first spring training. In those days, the players and managers were willing to spend hours explaining the intricacies of the game to a sympathetic listener. And that is what Roger did—at Fenway and Shea, in the Bronx and Chavez Ravine: he listened. And Roger, a person as complicated as any other, created a fan’s voice, a joyous voice, full of exclamation and wonder. Above all he has always been an ace describer who could portray the great Red Sox starter Luis Tiant “wheeling and rotating on the mound like a figure in a Bavarian clock tower.” One thing seems almost unfair: as we celebrate our friend this week, we, his readers, get the best gifts. And some of the very best—some of the best of Roger Angell—is right here.
—David Remnick
From The New Yorker’s Archive
Personal History
Early Innings
Boyhood memories of baseball.
By Roger Angell | 1992
Onward and Upward with the Arts
Storyville
How do you get published in The New Yorker? After six thousand stories in print and a few hundred thousand rejections, our fiction editors are still looking for the answer.
By Roger Angell | 1994
Onward and Outward
This Old Man
Life in the nineties.
By Roger Angell | 2014
The Sporting Scene
Down the Drain
In 1973, Steve Blass was an extremely successful and useful big-league pitcher. Then baseball suddenly stopped being fun for him.
By Roger Angell | 1975
Fiction
“Three Ladies in the Morning”
The author’s début short story in The New Yorker, about two women who encounter a surprising scene over their morning coffee at a hotel restaurant.
By Roger Angell | 1944
Personal History
Andy
For E. B. White’s readers and family, a sense of trust came easily.
By Roger Angell | 2005
The Sporting Scene
Distance
The game belongs to Bob Gibson.
By Roger Angell | 1980
Annals of Drinking
Dry Martini
The ultimate cocktail, down cold.
By Roger Angell | 2002
Poems
Greetings, Friends!
“Fair readers, hail! Now here’s a teaser: Who’s this pale, familiar geezer Appearing through the mists of time Atop a tow’r of creaky rhyme?”
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