Angell is doted on by the dabblers, the people who pick baseball up and put it down as the mood strikes, but is not, I believe, fully approved of in [sports columnist] Red Smith's kingdom, the press box, because he doesn't have to meet deadlines. In fact, most journalists wouldn't know what to do with the extra time if it was granted, as their occasional books show. But the Deadline is a stern discipline which makes for a brotherhood, and Angell isn't quite in it.

In fact, as a New Yorker writer, he has no natural allies in the business. He talks of dedicating Late Innings to the fans—by which he seems to mean something very close to E. M. Forster's "the sensitive, the decent and the plucky," a band of fellow spirits which one just has to take on faith. And speaking of Forster, imagine Angell's...