Angell made terrific use of his skill as a perceptive, sympathetic reporter when he was spending time with Steve Blass, an ace Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who mysteriously lost the ability to throw strikes after the 1972 season. By the time Angell met with him for a 1975 profile, “Down the Drain,” Blass was out of the game entirely, four years removed from pitching the winning game of the 1971 World Series. Other writers had approached him, trying to crack the mystery of how he had suddenly lost it, but he understood that Angell would reach for more than a story about “a guy who could pitch and then suddenly couldn’t pitch.” It took some thought and imagination for Angell to come up with an ending. There was still a pitcher in Blass, or a man who thought like a pitcher, he reasoned. And so, for the story’s final scene, in Blass’ living room, Angell asked him to “pitch” an imaginary inning against the mid-seventies Cincinnati Reds, the greatest-hitting team of its era. Blass described his thought process as he worked his way through the inning, batter by batter, and, with it, they had written the hardest part of the story—the ending—together. - www.wwd.com