14 Facts About Roger Angell

Roger Angell was an American essayist known for his writing on sports, especially baseball.

Roger Angell wrote numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, and criticism, and for many years wrote an annual Christmas poem for The New Yorker.

Roger Angell served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.

In 1948, Roger Angell was employed at Holiday Magazine, a travel magazine that featured literary writers.

Roger Angell's earliest published works were pieces of short fiction and personal narratives, several of which were collected in The Stone Arbor and Other Stories and A Day in the Life of Roger Angell.

Roger Angell first contributed to The New Yorker while serving in Hawaii as editor of an Air Force magazine; his short story titled "Three Ladies in the Morning" was published in March 1944.

Roger Angell became The New Yorkers fiction editor in the 1950s, occupying the same office as his mother, and continued to write for the magazine until 2020.

Roger Angell first wrote professionally about baseball in 1962, when William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, had him travel to Florida to write about spring training.

Roger Angell has been called the "Poet Laureate of baseball" but he disliked the term.

Roger Angell contributed commentary to the Ken Burns series Baseball, in 1994.

Roger Angell had two daughters, Callie and Alice, with his first wife, Evelyn, and a son, John Henry, with his second wife, Carol Rogge Angell.

Roger Angell died of congestive heart failure at his home in Manhattan on May 20,2022, at the age of 101.

Roger Angell was a long-time ex-officio member of the council of the Authors Guild, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

Roger Angell has four pieces excerpted in the Library of America volume Baseball: A Literary Anthology, more than any other author.