Summary[]
Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the merits of True Wins vs. no-hitters, a Pablo Sandoval fun fact, whether most pitchers would prefer to be better than average with a higher ERA or worse than average with a lower ERA, and whether the running Royals are, in fact, fun, then (26:24) talk to author Joe Bonomo about his book about about The New Yorker’s Hall of Fame baseball writer Roger Angell, touching on Angell’s notes and writing process, his career arc and evolution, his facility with words, his memory and and recall, his attitude about changes in the game, his best and most overlooked pieces, his feelings about being labeled a baseball writer, the larger themes in his work, and more.
Topics[]
- Interview with Joe Bonomo
- Conversations with Angell and reviewing his archives
- Angell's writing style and movement from notes to essay
- Angell's response to changes in baseball and analytics
- Angell's early career as an editor at the New Yorker
- How Angell turned to baseball writing
- How much of Angell's writing is published?
- Joe's favorite Roger Angell essays
- Themes that Angell returns to in his writing
Interstitial[]
Jenny and Johnny, "New Yorker Cartoon"
Banter[]
- Episode 1371 follow-up: Is a true win or a no-hitter more impressive? Sam is still not sure but he is considering a Stat Blast segment looking at game score and other related stats for these two types of games.
- Ben and Sam continue their discussion about the true win and which element of it is more impressive.
- Kansas City Royals base stealing frequency
Notes[]
- Ben says that he has had two "brief and unsatisfying" encounters with Roger Angell, comparing it to the SNL sketch where Chris Farley interviews Paul McCartney.
- Joe said that Angell was adamant about Joe's book not being a biography but rather a documentation of his writing career.
- Angell donated 66 boxes of his archives to the Hall of Fame which are open to the public.
- Joe says that Angell was originally skeptical about the influence of television broadcasts on baseball.
- Angell was originally hired by the New Yorker as a fiction editor.
- Joe estimates that he has a two foot high stack of printed, unpublished, essays of Angell.
Links[]
- Effectively Wild Episode 1372: The Angellic Choir
- What Noah Syndergaard did is so rare -- it deserves its own name by Sam Miller
- Two of MLB's fastest players tagged out on the same play by Jesse Yomtov
- Billy Hamilton scores from second on sacrifice fly by Bill Baer
- Roger Angell Archive
- No Place I Would Rather Be by Joe Bonomo