Roger Angell, Hall of Fame Baseball Writer, Dies at 101

Famed writer and essayist Roger Angell, who covered baseball for the New Yorker for six decades, has died at the age of 101.

His wife, Margaret Moorman, told the New York Times that Angell died of congestive heart failure.

Angell began contributing to the New Yorker in 1944. He became a fiction editor in 1956 and started covering sports in 1962. 

Angell was a versatile, multi-faceted writer whose talents allowed him to astutely cover other sports (tennis, hockey, Olympics, etc.) and an assortment of non-sports topics (film reviews, New Yorker Notes and Comments pieces).

His work about baseball, however, made him a sportswriting titan and legend.

In 2014, the Baseball Writers' Association of America awarded Angell with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest honor that can be bestowed to writers by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

That's in addition to a host of other honors, including the inaugural PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing, the George Polk Award for Commentary and a Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, among others.

Angell's work could also be found in his collection of books, including The Summer Game, Five Seasons, and Late Innings.

Angell was the stepson of author E.B. White, whose works included Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web.

The breadth, depth and brilliance of Angell's eight decades of indelible work can't be encapsulated in one place, but his unique voice lives on in a variety of pieces and passages ranging from Bob Gibson's windup and rooting for the 1962 New York Mets to aging and an ode to the dry martini:

A litany of writers and readers offered their remembrances, condolences and memories of Angell shortly after news of his passing broke.

The New York Yankees also offered their condolences, as did the Hall of Fame.

Angell, a Harvard graduate, also served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, acted as an ex-officio member of the Authors' Guild and was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.