“The Summer Game” Book Review

Jason Gudim pens another guest column, this time reviewing a book by legendary author Roger Angell

I just finished reading “The Summer Game” by Roger Angell.

This isn’t a particularly newsworthy event, nor do I intend this article to be a high school book report. But I do want to talk about what this book did for me. “The Summer Game” reset my joy, or rather it reset the joy I derive from being a baseball fan.

For several years now, my baseball fandom has been careening down a dark, angry, old-man-yells-at-cloud sort of path. I long for the baseball of the 1980s and early 1990s — baseball that featured high batting averages, low strikeout totals, defense, and stolen bases. 

The days of Ozzie Smith, Mike Greenwell, Vince Coleman, and Kirby Puckett (and Tom Brunansky!). The days of Oil Can Boyd, Frank Viola, and Pat Hentgen— these are my ideal baseball times. I like when Rob Deer is an anomaly, not the norm. 

There is a fair amount of nostalgia baked into this opinion. It’s easy to romanticize the idyllic times of childhood. But there’s more to it than that for me. Baseball is better when the ball is put in play. Defenses are held accountable, baserunning becomes tantamount, and fans are invited and encouraged to pay attention to the action on the diamond.

In recent years, however, this brand of baseball has been minimized and nearly abandoned. We have fully entered the age of the Three True Outcomes. Home runs and strikeouts dominate the on-field product, and launch angles and shifts dominate the strategy. As these realities have become the norm, I’ve become more and more grumpy, turning into the kind of fan that defines his love for the game by how much he hates it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool analytics hater. I love advanced statistics and have embraced the information revolution that’s become available to your average baseball fan. I just don’t love what baseball front offices and dugouts have done with the same information revolution.

I miss complete games. I miss managers being forced to decide if they should pinch hit for a pitcher to maximize their chance of scoring a run or let the pitcher continue to roll through the opposing lineup. I miss .350 batting averages. Heck, I miss .325 batting averages, .300 batting averages, and .275 batting averages, too.

I was completely prepared and ready to grumble and complain my way through the 2023 season. The MLB decision-makers brought zombie runners back, they banned the shift rather than forcing teams to adjust by valuing contact hitters who utilize the opposite field, and they instituted the pitch clock to a sport that has been historically and uniquely untimed.

But “The Summer Game” changed all that. Roger Angell, through his masterfully written essays about baseball during the 1960s, reminded me of what it’s like to be a fan who truly loves to watch baseball and soak it in.

In the book, Angell more or less documents the coming of age of the then-expansion New York Mets. He writes about their haphazard and brutal first season. He takes time to admire the talent and poise of vastly superior teams. He records the unexpected and unspeakable joy of being a Mets fan during 1969. And through it all, he does so not as a professional, but as a fan. He writes as one who loves and enjoys baseball.

What surprised me about this book was reading how he wrestled with baseball as a progressing game. As the sport changed with the times, Angell didn’t always love the changes, but he always loved baseball. 

Angell grapples with the diluted talent caused by the beginning of the expansion era. He frets about the coming of free agency, even when he didn’t have the words “free agency” at his disposal. He makes notes about subdued offense, too many strikeouts, and bad defense. This all sounds incredibly familiar. It’s easy to forget that baseball is an almost reliably cyclical game.

But through it all, Angell writes about baseball as a game that should be enjoyed and savored. Oftentimes he marvels at the poetic nature of the game. His joy, as a fan, is palpable.

That joy is what won me over and won me back. I have not been a joyful fan since the Mauer/Morneau peak of the early-2000s Twins.  I’ve still occasionally enjoyed baseball: listening to a game on the radio in my backyard is still a delight; attending a game at Target Field has rarely disappointed; the statistics and numbers are still endlessly fascinating to me.

But this year, thanks to Roger Angell and “The Summer Game”, I intend to recapture my joy as a fan. I’m going to lean into the new rules and observe their effects. I can’t wait to see how the shift ban affects defense. I was already on board with the pitch clock. I’m excited for the enlarged bases and the potential for a rekindled emphasis on the running game. And I will simply pretend that the zombie runner doesn’t exist. 

Whatever the case might be, I’m ready to enjoy baseball again.