From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Ring Lardner’s Baseball Round-Up

 

 

Short Book Clips

Baseball Round-Up -You Know Me Al and other stories, Ring Lardner

The first paragraph of this review was written for the series of stories in Ring Lardner’s You Know Me, Al that is contained in the present book under review as well.  In addition to You Know Me, Al there some other classic baseball stories here, particularly Alibi Ike and My Roomy that can be covered by the comments in the first paragraph. The other, non-baseball, stories in this book are reviewed in the second paragraph.

At one time early in the first part of the 20^th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. That was a time when the name Ring Lardner was well known in sports- writing and literary circles. The sports- writing part was easy because that was his beat. The literary part is much harder to recognize but clearly the character of Jack Keefe has become an American classic. Does one need to be a baseball fan to appreciate this work? Hell, no. We all know, in sports or otherwise, this guy, right? You know the guy with some talent who has no problem blaming the other guy for mistakes while he (or she) is pure as the driven snow. Take a look at any of today ‘s sports headlines (hell, any headlines).

That is the concept that drives these stories told in the form of letters to Al, his buddy back home, his hick home town . The language, the malapropisms and the schemes all evoke an earlier more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such a character based on today’s sports ethic. The athletes would have a spokesperson ‘spinning’ their take on the matters of the day, and owners, managers, coaches, agents, bat boys, season ticket-holders, average beer drinkers, and other assorted  hangers-on as well. The only one that might come close today is Nuke LaRouche in the movie Bull Durham but as that movie progressed Nuke was getting ‘wise.’ Read these stories. Read them more than .  

There is no question that aside from a deft ear as a sportswriter that Ring Lardner also had an ear for the foibles and frustrations of the newly rising middle class of the post- World War I Midwestern heartland. This is not the land of Fitzgerald’s or Hemingway’s “Lost Generation” but of those left behind trying to scratch out an existence anyway they could. However, rather than beat up on the ‘yokels’ straight up Lardner pokes and prods at their pretensions in a fairly harmless way, at least on the surface, but on re-reading these stories recently I found myself saying ‘ouch’ to the literary stabs in the backs that he thrust at his victims in stories like Gullible’s Travels (a title which aptly sums up my comment) and The Big Town. Read on.