Nobody Did It Better Than Roger Angell

To say that Roger Angell was America’s best baseball writer feels insufficient. It is true—of course—but it misses so much.

For more than half a century, Angell wrote about baseball for The New Yorker, covering not the sport itself so much as the experience of what it meant to care about it. He was a Hall of Famer who could not have been more deserving. Angell died at home in Manhattan on Friday from congestive heart failure, his wife told The New York Times. He was 101 years old.

Angell profiled generations of the biggest stars in the game. He wrote about every World Series for decades; he covered spring training and the minor leagues and entirely forgettable weekday contests. But what tied…