The Unsentimental Mr. Angell

Nice profile of Roger Angell by Sridhar Pappu over at

Angell saw Babe Ruth in his prime, but he never writes sentimentally about baseball, a sport that has inspired many sports-writers to produce reams of awful, faux-poetic prose. His habit of telling it straight is what makes his nine books hold up and keeps him relevant today. "I don't go for nostalgia," he says. "I try not to. It's so easy to sentimentalize the good old days, but I don't ever do that. I'm aware that things have changed, but I try not to go there. It's very easy, and you get sort of a mental diabetes. All that goo. I am a foe of goo, maybe too much so."

[Photo Credit: Brigitte Lacombe]