Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion

Summary: Roger Angell essays covering the seasons of 1972 to 1976 that arguably transformed baseball into the sport it is today.

I’ve been discovering the marvelous baseball writing of the recently deceased Roger Angell, one of the great baseball writers. This book includes essays from the seasons of 1972 to 1976, my college years. One of the marvels of this collection was simply to relive in the reading the historic seven-game series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox in 1975. It was the era of the Big Red Machine, Yaz, Carlton Fisk, Fred Lynn, and Luis Tiant with the Red Sox (the latter yet another great player traded away by the Indians!).

Along the way, he reminded me of the Oakland A’s championship teams united by show more their love of winning and their shared resentments of Charlie Finley, the brilliant and flawed club owner. By contrast, Angell recounts an afternoon watching the Giants in the twilight years of Horace Stoneham’s ownership, a gracious host.

We read of the final games of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, as well as the years of Nolan Ryan’s greatness. He also writes of Steve Blass, who threw an amazing World Series game with the Pirates, and in subsequent years lost his control. He could pitch well in practice, his arm was sound, but he could not get his head sorted out. And finally he hung it up.

He takes us behind the scenes, at spring training games, the rebuilding of both Yankee Stadium and the Yankee team and Walter Alston’s brief playing career and the end of his managerial leadership of the Dodgers. We learn about the reserve clause that bound players to their teams, the fight to gain free agency, the owners lockout, and subsequent agreement that changed baseball as players won larger salaries and became more mobile. Angell tells the other side, about how many players want to remain in a community and hated trades.

One of the “behind-the-scenes” accounts in the book was Angell’s trip with Ray Scarborough, an Angel’s scout as he evaluated players. We learn what scouts looked for in pitchers (body, mechanics, and a good fastball with control) and hitters (good contact, whether they got hits or not) and the fraternity among them even though they scouted for rival clubs. It all came down to the draft and who chose who.

It was a time of change with the corporatization of the game, artificial turf, a changing of the guard of stars, and the power struggle between the Players Association and owners. But so much of this book just revels in the game, the ups and downs of each season, rain delays, and the quirks of each ball park, the contenders, the playoffs and the World Series. Angell reminded me of games I’d seen and players I remembered: Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente, Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and Johnny Bench and Pete Rose (alias Charley Hustle).

For the young fan, the book tells us something of how we got to the present. For older fans, it is a time to remember. For all of us, Angell’s descriptions invite us to a special kind of fantasy baseball, reliving in our minds real games and personalities of the past. show less

Has there ever been a better observer, a better narrator of baseball than Roger Angell? I doubt it. This book was published nearly thirty years ago, but the writing is timeless.

This collection of stories chronicle baseball from 1971-75. Angell follows the Finley A's and ends with the 1975 World Series. His finest moment comes in the chapter entitled Agincourt and After, in which he describes the shootout between the Reds and the Red Sox in '75, and what might be the best World Series of all time.

Angell writes with insight and great wit. His description of the many deliveries of Luis Tiant is laugh out loud funny.

Published in 1977, covering the titular five seasons from 1972 to 1976, this book is a throwback to a prior era in baseball with top-notch writing. Angell wrote this series of essays for the New Yorker, so each is a standalone article with a particular topic and, taken as a whole, provides a striking picture of what the game was like at the time. The publication date of the article is shown at the top and the articles are not arranged in sequential order.

It highlights notable achievements in the sport at the time, such as:

• • Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record


• • Nolan Ryan completing his third and fourth no-hitters (which baseball fans know expanded to seven by the end of his career)


• • Lou Brock setting records for

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• base stealing

Angell relates what he considered at the time to be an adulteration of the sport:

• • Initiation of the designated hitter in the American League, in part to shore up attendance
  
• • Obvious impact of corporate thinking in baseball
  
• • Beginning of free agency and player salaries rising to unprecedented levels (a harbinger of even higher salaries to come)
  
• • Increase in night games and related changes due to television coverage
  
• • Artificial turf, and its increase in wear and tear on the athletes
  

He also shares several human-interest stories, such as:

• • Steve Blass suddenly and mysteriously losing his effectiveness as a pitcher
  
• • The antics of Charles O. Finley and his colorful Oakland A’s
  
• • Conversations with old-style Giant’s owner Horace Stoneham
  
• • A group of three Tigers’ fans keeping stats and reacting to the ups and downs of the season
  
• • Inside look at traveling with a veteran baseball scout, Ray Scarborough, as he evaluates prospects for the Angels
  

Angell takes a look at just about every aspect of the game, including labor issues, owners, coaches, managers, the Commissioner’s Office, star players, fringe players, scouting, the draft, minor leagues, fans, umpires, rain delays, the baseball itself, teams of note (A’s, Reds, Mets, Tigers, Pirates, Yankees, and more), statistics, records, stadiums, and synopses of games. I particularly enjoyed the quaint descriptions of the Spring Training environment, prior to a time when fans flocked to Arizona and Florida to see their favorite teams get ready for the season. Baseball has changed significantly since the 1970’s but this was a time when many of the seeds of current trends were sown. Angell’s obvious love of the game shines through his vivid portrayal of the sights, sounds, emotions, and personalities involved. Avid baseball fans will enjoy this compilation, especially those interested in nostalgia and the history of the game. show less

Roger Angell has been doubly blessed with a passionate love for baseball and an undeniable talent for writing. Fortunately, for us, he combines these two elements of his character quite often. In this collection of essays, he turns his enlightened lens on the 1972-1976 major league baseball seasons, which featured landmark events like Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, the Amazin’ Mets of 1973, the birth of the free agent era, and Carlton Fisk’s incredible shot in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series at Fenway.

Angell’s pellucid prose animates these events, and many others, in a way that will instantly recall them to the forefront of your memory—if you were lucky enough to live through them—or make you wish you’d witnessed them if show more they somehow escaped the scope of your life. Angell also examines some everyday fans like three rabid Detroit devotees as well as some of the game’s invisible stars like professional scouts.

A true baseball lover couldn’t do much better than to read anything Angell has ever written about the game. From the months of November through February, nothing fills the baseball void as Angell does. show less