Roger Angell, whose vivid essays about baseball in The New Yorker saw him enshrined in a special writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., has died. He was 101 and died of heart failure, according to New Yorker editor David Remnick.

“No one lives forever, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that Roger had a good shot at it,” Remnick wrote Friday. “Like the rest of us, he suffered pain and loss and doubt, but he usually kept the blues at bay, always looking forward; he kept writing, reading, memorizing new poems, forming new relationships.”

Angell was the son of founding New Yorker fiction editor Katharine White and stepson of longtime staff writer E.B. White. He was first published in the magazine in his 20s, during World War II, and was still contributing in his 90s.

His career was celebrated by the Bbwaa Career Excellence...