I first read this book twenty years ago, when the events it describes were recent enough to seem recent. This time my memory of the baseball seasons from 1962-1971 were much fainter, but the book was every bit as enjoyable. Baseball has always been my favorite sport, and Angell appreciates it at a much deeper level than even I do. I can only envy his writing. Here are some examples:

He [Choo Choo Coleman of the '62 Mets] is quick on the base paths, but this is an attribute about as essential for catchers as neat handwriting.

McNally [Dave McNally of the '66 Orioles] walked the bases full, with one out, and then disappeared, having thrown sixty-three pitches, more or less in the style of a wedding guest heaving rice ...

Dick Hall [of the '70 Orioles] is six feet six and one-half inches tall and forty years old, and he pitches with an awkward, sideways motion that suggests a man feeling under his bed for a lost collar stud.

Unfortunately, neither team [the '71 Dodgers and Giants] could do better than split the remaining fourteen games of its schedule, and what had become a pennant race suggested thereafter nothing so much as two men walking side by side down an up escalator.

As you would expect from a New Yorker columnist, Angell's coverage is slanted toward East Coast teams, particularly those from New York, but he covers the World Series from 1962-1971 with a chapter on each and includes scattered chapters on spring training and mid-season games. The book, like the game of baseball, is one I found exciting and relaxing at the same time.