Some ask what makes Roger Angell so good. I’ll take a swing at that pitch.

Angell literally grew up at New Yorker magazine. His stepfather was E.B. White, a New Yorker staff writer, and author of several famous books. The New Yorker had a particular style of writing, which is actually based on an old French style of prose. That style must be as natural to Angell as breathing.

There’s a book which defines that style called Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner.

Denis Dutton has a good review of the book. The web site for the book also has a good guide to writing in classic style. Here’s an excerpt:

Classic style is not descriptive style…The classic stylist, by contrast, first perceives an interesting, not necessarily grand, truth that is worth presenting. This perception almost always involves conceptual nuance – the classic stylist would otherwise have no reason to speak, since there is no call to point out what everyone already sees.

Angell doesn’t report. He’s not interested in providing you with a list of facts. He’s not arguing a point, either. He’s presenting an idea. He lays it out like a master chef lays out a dish, and then he simply places it in front of you and assumes you’ll know what to do with it. Or, as Denis Dutton puts it:

The classic prose stylist therefore need never descend to grinding persuasion; an unobstructed view of things is always enough. Every decision of the writer is presumably the same decision that the reader would have made.

“Grinding persuasion”: is there a more apt term for so much of sabermetric writing? Between that and just plain re-reporting what’s been reported elsewhere, you’ve probably got over 90% of the baseball blogosphere.

That’s why writers like Angell and Alex Belth, who present, rather than report or persuade, are so refreshing. It need not be, but it’s rare.