You Know Me Al

by Ring Lardner

In the early decades of the twentieth century, newspaperman and humorist Ring Lardner (1885–1933) made America laugh with his hilarious depictions of odd characters in the sporting world, Tin Pan Alley, and Hollywood. His first great success was You Know Me Al, a fictional series of letters from a popular baseball hero to his friend, slyly revealing the letter writer as a crude, conceited, semiliterate, self-deceiving boob.
The letters, created while Lardner was writing a sports column for The Chicago Tribune, first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and were later published in book form in 1918. You Know Me Al reveals Lardner as a satirical master at the peak of his a fine albeit misanthropic storyteller with a superb feel for the niceties of characters and speech and a sure instinct for provoking laughter.

Genres: Baseball, Fiction, Sports, Humor, Classics, American, Novels

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.

Father of author Ring Lardner Jr.

Reviews

[Zinta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not being much of a sports fan, but for many years standing close beside one, I knew nothing of Ring Lardner until I visited Niles, Michigan, pursuing a story of my own. In a quaint hometown treasures museum, we discovered the local author gone national, with a first edition of "You Know Me Al" under glass. Intrigued, I purchased a modern day copy soon after for my sports fan, but I had to read it first myself.

In full agreement with Virginia Woolf in the book's Introduction, I can say you do not have to be a sports fan to enjoy Lardner's humorous portrayal of Jack Keefe, a bush-league pitcher who writes frequent letters to his best pal, Al, about his adventures on and off the baseball field. The letters are filled with hilarious misspellings, misunderstandings, and general bumblings. Jack may be a good athlete, but his mind, shall we say, is his least athletic muscle...

All of which adds to the slim book's charm. Jack writes to Al about his fortunes and misfortunes in pitching, forever blaming others for his own obvious failures, never missing a chance to boast, thumping his manly chest with threats that he will beat up this guy or that for some imagined slight. His arrogance is in high form, but just about the time it approaches the point of no return, Jack charms with his naivete. One can't help but laugh at him again, much as one laughs at a child or a wildly bounding puppy.

The letters are not just about baseball, however, but just as comically illustrate Jack's romantic flailings, as he imagines Violet is ever so smitten with him, then decides to marry another, only to drop her for another, only to long for the first again, only to marry Florrie. With whom the threat of divorce comes up again and again in similar cyclings. Jack waffles with all decisions in his life: team trips, moving from one city to another, borrowing and repaying funds to the silent and surely most patient and near saintly Al.

It is the lack of hearing from the other side that keeps me from adding a fifth star to this review. We have only Jack's view of himself and his world, charming bumbler that he is, and I found myself often wishing for Al's side in response. Nonetheless, this is a classic that can obviously be enjoyed even over a great passage of time since its original writing some eighty years ago, and with or without a penchant for sports.

[Aaron Million · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ring Lardner is from the same small town that I am from, albeit we were there in different centuries! Still, it is nice to have a sense of connection such as that, vague as it may be. This is a satirical, light-hearted read, consisting of letters written from Jack "the busher" to his friend Al in Bedford, IN. We do not see any of Al's return letters. jack is a baseball player for the 1910s Chicago White Sox, and he is constantly getting himself into trouble - usually due to his big mouth. His letters are rambling, at times disjointed, efforts that can be difficult to read in parts because he spells words out phonetically. There are also numerous other spelling errors, substituting the wrong words, and using the wrong version of words ("there" instead of "their", for example).

While I did enjoy reading the letters, and I laughed here and there, after awhile they did get to be a bit repetitious. Jack would adamantly tell Al that he is not going to do something, only to turn around and do it in the next letter. Any games that he lost was someone else's fault, never his. Any argument with anyone was not his fault. While comical, it did get a bit stale by the end. Still, it is nice to read something from a little over 100 years ago and get a glimpse into how much different life was back in that era of train travel, telegrams, and day baseball.

Grade: B

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novelty kind of wears off but everything else that charmed me the first read through is all still there. If you think quips and wisecracks are funny, you will get a laugh out of this, and the main character is a recognizable every man trying to get by on his natural born gifts and little else.


-original review-
This was written well over a hundred years ago now and yet it's so funny that I would easily recommend it. The main character is an egotistical moron, but he's never malicious and his naivety is oddly redeeming. The story is told in letter form as Jack writes to his friend Al describing his woes with women, troubles with money and always always how was never his fault for losing games. It does take its time getting going, and Jack's semi-literate style of writing requires some getting used to but if you're looking for some timeless comedy, look no further even if you're not a sports fan.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the early 20th century baseball writing was becoming too overwrought and intellectual, so Ring Lardner wrote a baseball comedy - a series of letters from a minor league “busher” to his friend Al. This was originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1914, and it’s very funny.

Earlier this year I read the excellent When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning about how during World War 2 the government published classic and popular books for troops overseas as Armed Services Editions. They were pocket-sized editions of full-length books, and this book was on the list. I was able to find and read an actual ASE version of this book from 1945 that I found on eBay. There’s a picture of one here - http://keymancollectibles.com/publica...

Here is the Wikipedia page about the ASEs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_S...

And here is a complete list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

There are 1,322 books that were printed as ASEs, and I plan to read several this year.

[Tom Stamper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ring Lardner’s reputation suffers because he is funny. That Hemingway and Fitzgerald idolized him means nothing to the teachers that would rather assign Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As I tried to get through Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in 11th grade I wish instead I would have been given the choice to read Lardner, somebody I found years later by accident. That option would have made me like reading at an earlier age. Humor and baseball were everything to me but I was stuck reading about Tom Joad’s dustbowl that I was too young to appreciate. An arrogant athlete was much easier to identify with. We had one in that same literature class.

Jack Keefe is what Crash Davis calls Nuke LaLoosh, a million dollar arm to go alongside a ten cent head. Nuke matures through the movie Bull Durham while Keefe thankfully finds no maturity here in this book. His obliviousness is both funny and at times cringe worthy but remind yourself this is a fictional character and the laughing comes easier without the guilt. Lardner can’t help himself and allows Keefe be witty a time or two but the humor mostly comes from his lack of self-awareness.

This is of its time and timeless. The reader will identify with the human foibles while the inflation of the dollar will make the costs of things seem ancient.

[Scooter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't tell you how many times I read this book as a teen. One of Ring Lardner's great talents was his distinctive voice of the uneducated ballplayer in the 1910s or so. Here, we read letters from a pitcher, Jack Keefe, trying to squeak his way into the big leagues. Jack is sure of his ability; he doesn't just think he will be a star, he thinks he IS one. The novel is a wonderful look at the "fear and arrogance," to borrow a phrase, needed to succeed in professional sports.

It's also a good look at the everyday concerns a borderline major-leaguer has to concern himself with. I mean, anyone can write a novel about the hero who hits the big homer to win the game. The real human story is the guy at the end of the bench who may not be there tomorrow.

It doesn't hurt, I'm sure, to enjoy hearing well-known (and lesser) players of that era described by a contemporary. (Yes, it's fiction, but Lardner knew ballplayers.

[Bfisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read this, it helped me to understand the baseball players in the Black Sox scandal. Although this book was published in 1916, I could see how a person like Jack Keefe, the player depicted in the story, could become entangled in a plot to fix the 1919 World Series.

[Steve]

This collection of fictional letters from Jack Keefe to a hometown friend, Al, follows the professional and personal development of a young major league pitcher, working mostly for the Chicago White Sox. I enjoyed Mr. Lardner’s vernacular, with the frequent misspellings. He also created an excellent portrayal of the human soul in motion; the grass always feels greener – and blame is always best levied – elsewhere.

I worked 4 innings against my old team the San Francisco Club and I give them nothing but fast ones but they sure was fast ones and you could hear them zip. Charlie O’Leary was trying to get out of the way of one of them and it hit his bat and went over first base for a base hit but at that Fournier would of eat it up if it had of been Chase playing first base instead of Fournier.

Translation: Jack served up a base hit. Really, why own an ounce of responsibility for failures. I figure part of survival in the modern era is perfecting the art of the excuse. To advance rapidly, those excuses must be of perfect pitch; dissonance is most easily detected and unwelcome. See, I'd be known as a great writer if only you all weren't too distracted to notice.

[Jmorgan1314 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did you know that You Know Me Al was initially published as six separate but interrelated short stories in The Saturday Evening Post? The excellent author Ring Lardner wrote You Know Me Al. This book is arguably one of the top pieces in American humor writing. It is a fictional book written about Jack Keefe who is a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the early 1900s. Throughout the book, Jack talks about all of his ups and downs in his career, on and off of the field. Jack’s romantic relationships play a significant role in the book. He goes from one girl to the next until going back to the first one that he had left. That is one of the many comical events throughout the book. One of the most significant characteristics of Jack is how boastful he is. Whenever Jack gets a win on the mound, he says it is because of his performance. However, whenever he loses, Jack will always blame his teammates.
The first strength of this book is the style of how Ring Lardner wrote it. Lardner split up the book into letters in which Jack had written to his old friend Al back at home. I had never seen this format before and thought it was a unique way to present Jack’s life to the reader. Also, all of the dates were written on each letter. This addition is nice because it lets the reader know the amount of time that has passed in between each letter. Another strength of You Know Me Al is how entertaining it is. Jack keeps the reader turning the pages with his lack of education. He frequently has grammatical errors such as misspelling and misusing words. Due to Jack’s lack of education, this book is generally an easier read. Contradictory to the first strength, a weakness of this book is how Lardner wrote it. It would have been better if the letters alternated between Jack and his friend Al. That way, the reader can see someone else's perspective to Jack as almost analysis of his actions. Additionally, Al could have given Jack some advice on what to do in certain situations of his life.
A Goodreads review written by “Thom” states that too much of the book was written about the offseason. I agree with this statement. These sections of the book got a bit boring and dull. Lardner should have taken some of these parts out to make it a shorter read. Another Goodreads review by “J” says that you do not have to be a fan of baseball to like this book. I agree with that because the book is very entertaining on its own. However, it is easier to understand as well as more entertaining being a baseball player.

[Charles H Berlemann Jr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this over a weekend. It is interesting in that the book is written one sided as a series of letters from one guy who is a ball player over to his friend back home. The time frame of this book is pre-WW1. So in that sense there are a number of name drops happening of baseball players who were big names of WW1 era, such as "Kid" Gleason and Ty Cobb. The synopsis of the book is that the writer of these letters moves from the old "bush leagues" or farm teams as they would be called now a days and becomes a Chicago White Sox player. However, he is very much still a country bumpkin and gets snookered left and right by various friends around him, fellow teammates, even the owner of the White Sox players. Some of the scraps this guy relates, you can tell that he is a braggard, a decent player and someone who can't realize that he is in trouble till he is so far in over his head that reality strikes home. Overall, the stories are interesting and the scraps are pretty funny. However, at a point the story drags with some of these letters and some of the almost constant use of the phrase "You know me, Al" kind of drags the book down. It is an interesting bit of insight into the early days of baseball. So if you are a big fan of baseball, then pick this up. If you are looking for some interesting stories about silly folks getting into comedic troubles, then this might be interesting. For anyone else, if you can pick this up for less than a couple of dollars and want to do it; then use this as a weekend get away story.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very funny (albeit repetitive), slender, epistolary novel detailing the nascent career of a baseball pitcher in the early part of the 20th century. Our "hero" Jack Keefe is an ignorant, yet talented, boob whose naivete has to be read to be believed. There's a sharpness to the satire that feels very contemporary, in spite of the plodding repetition (which is probably a function of having been serialized initially). Credited with beginning modern American Baseball Fiction, there are still a lot of laughs to be had in this little book, even today, nearly 100 years later.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! A series of letters from a fictional bushleague pitcher circa 1914 written by Ring Lardner ( a great sports journalist from the early 1900's ). If you liked to hear stories from you ole grandpas about times past etc you'll love this book. The vernacular is pure american. Lou

[Paul Jellinek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compilation of letters from a fictional 1910's White Sox pitcher to his hometown friend Al about his trials and tribulations in the Major League, complete with hillarious misspellings and malapropisms. I give it four stars instead of five because it begins to wear a little thin toward the end.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first learned of Ring Lardner as Holden Caulfield's second favorite author when I read Catcher In the Rye over fifty years ago. I usally get around to reading authors recommended in the other books that I read a lot quicker. This one was good, though I might have liked it even more if I had read it when I was Holden's age.

I don't usually like episotolary novels, but this one worked for me. I have read a few epistolary novels that include semi-literate letters by servants, but I have never read one before like this where the exclusive narrator is borderline illiterate. In this case the bad grammar and the unreliability of Jack Keefe worked like a charm. Jack is full of himself and in most ways not a very good guy, but still he is quite charming in his bluster, and he has to have at least some of the talent that he claims to have for him to manage to have a career in major league baseball. He can't be totally talentless if he is able to face down Ty Cobb when he is having a good day. And it's never clear how much of his own bullshit he actually believes. He's a moocher, a drinker, and a liar, and he can't sustain a relationship with a woman. He never accepts responsibility for his problems, which are always someone else's fault. So how come I liked him so much? He's an unforgettable character.

Mr. Lardner also does a great job in capturing the world of professional baseball back in the days when baseball was truely America's Pastime, when the players made less than $3000 a year and when it was populated by colorful characters like Comiskey, Mathewson and Cobb. It was a tough life in a tough world, but was the stuff of legend.

[Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Know Me Al is structured as a series of letters from a Major League pitcher to a friend from home (the titular Al). It's not as laugh-out-loud funny as the other book I've read by Ring Lardner, Gullible's Travels, but it makes up for it with strong character development and authentic atmosphere. The main character, Jack Keefe, constantly blusters about how good he is. Sometimes he proves it, as in a game where he beats the Ty Cobb Tigers, but other times he fails spectacularly. In those cases, he inevitably has a full list of excuses, from his teammates who should have caught a ball, or an umpire who should have called a strike, or that his arm was too tired and the manager shouldn't have left him in the game, etc. etc. Despite his cockiness, Keefe is likable and it is fun to read his interactions with real people of the time (1910s) like Cobb, Charles Comiskey, Eddie Cicotte, Tris Speaker, and many others.

As I mentioned, this book doesn't have as many laughs, but Lardner derives great ironic humor from, for instance, Keefe's salary negotiations. "You know me, Al," he tells his friend, I will demand $5000 a year and if I don't get it, I will go pitch somewhere else. Of course, he somehow ends up accepting the same old salary in the end.

Lardner evidently continued this series of letters for several years. I will have to see if I can find the later books.

[Chris Sulima · Rating 4 out of 5]

A legitimately funny book, which is impressive after 100+ years. I recommend the audio narration because the reader added a lot to the subtlety and irony in the writing style, as well as helped Jack’s letters flow in spite of his grammatical and spelling issues. The letters got a bit repetitive by the end, but the first 5 chapters were highly enjoyable.

[Steve Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Know me Al

I hadn’t read this book since I was in high school and it still makes me laugh out loud. Lardner had such a grip on human nature, baseball, and the language. It was a treat and a true classic.

[F. Schuermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack O' Keefe is definitely a character to be remembered! Although his self-centeredness does come across as annoying at times, I couldn't help but feel a pang of pity at his divorce from reality.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Review is about the Kindle $0.79 version of Ring Lardner’s You Know Me AL. I have read and enjoyed other titles by Ring Lardner and found this one disappointing. The title is a joke, in that this is not Al speaking, but the narrator and protagonist Jack Keefe writing to his friend Al. as in You know me (signed) Al; Hilarious, or maybe not. The book is highly of its time, filled with the slang peculiar to 1900’s baseball and the mid -west. In this book Lardner lacks the ear for language of much better American writers like Mark Twain or Damon Runyon. You Know Me can be tedious, repetitious and predictable. It has is charm. It lacks violence and sex and may be better for a young adult reader and in particular a young baseball fan. The notion of a Big League Player being happy on $200 a month may make the entire book worth reading-to someone else.

Ring Lardner had been a sports columnist and knew exactly what a pitcher, newly arrived in the big leagues might look and sound like. In his character, Jack Keefe we have a believable, consistent lunk. He is the kind of athlete that a great team owner like Chicago White Socks owner Charles Comiskey might hire then jack around on salary. This was a time period where coaches had the barest understanding of the proper way to keep a player in shape. The business/science of coaching and controlling players who may be long on confidence an short on experience or common sense was decades after this time period.

So Jack bumbles his way with his team mates, who are always the reason for his losses.Jack ignores his coaches and has no judgement about women. To Lardner’s credit, Jack is a very good pitcher. He may not win every game, but he saves more than a few and rarely fails to perform. That is, he is credible as a major league pitcher, and being a good pitcher we can believe that he has so much freedom to work against himself.

Otherwise the book is repetitions of play for play game action and mostly the same kinds misadventures away from the field. A running gag will be how many times he cannot get back home to visit Al and how many ways he fails with women. He will almost or think about or otherwise have the urge to bust some one’s jaw about every 5 pages. No one ever gets a busted jaw. More like every page he is complaining about how much something costs. To the modern reader the recitations of what can be bought for a few dollars or even a few nickels may be the only surprises in the book.

I like Ring Lardner. Some will enjoy You Know me Al as a view into early professional baseball and may find humor in the misadventures of a big league lunkhead. For me it just got old.

[Christo · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to thinking about it, baseball isn’t much different in the past than how it is today, and “You Know Me Al” made me realize that. The drama in Mlb you here on the news is pretty darn close to the things that go on in Jack’s life. You Know Me Al is a book about Jack Keefe and his stories about his personal life as well as his life on and off the baseball diamond. The way this book is structured is like no other, the author wrote it so it is a series of letters from Jack to his best friend back home in Bedford, Massachusetts his name is Al. I enjoyed this book very much, it had the perfect balance of funny with serious and obviously baseball. I think that one of the main reasons I liked this book was because I play baseball so I could connect with Jack at times throughout the book. Jack Keefe is a bush league(like an AA or farm league) pitcher in 1915 when he was called up to play for the Chicago White Sox. He started off modest and graceful in the league but shortly after he became full of himself and his staff wasn’t the biggest fan of him and his temperament. Luckily, he fixed it but it took him a couple of “fiances” and a couple of temper tantrums later.

As I was reading other Goodreads reviews on this book I’m getting nothing but positive compliments to this book, and it’s safe to say that I agree with them. My favorite review was one that said: “this is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.” I agree 100% this book never failed to make me laugh because Jack was always up to something or planning on doing something else. Other Goodreads reviewers said that the writing strategy was brilliant. Again I second that because I have never read a book written this way, and I think it is smart. It puts a different point of view in the book because he’s telling a story through letters. Another thing that I found and agree with is I wish that some letters were written by Al, but I think I understand why the author did that. I think he wanted to put some imagination in his reader's mind, which worked tremendously. As I was looking through the Goodreads reviews the majority of them rated the book very highly and enjoyed it very much.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys baseball and a good laugh. This isn’t a challenging novel but it keeps you turning the pages. If you like reading serious type books this one isn’t for you, while at some times it is more serious, the times where it isn’t are some of the more crucial parts of the book. Overall, I really enjoyed “You Know Me Al” and I hope to read more Ring Lardner novels in the future hoping that they are as good as this one.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had not never heard of Ring Lardner until a visit to his home town in Niles Michigan right near outside of Kalamazoo. Born in Niles Michigan in 1885 Lardner was a sports writer for the Chicago Tribyoon but he is best well known for these busher letters that he rote as instalmints for The Satirday Eevning Post.

The best letters were collected for this book You Know Me Al that were first published in 1914. It cronikles a bushers rise to the major league threw a serious of letters written to his pal Al in Bedford Illinoy. Jack Keefe is a right hander pitcher who has got some good stuf but he is offten his own worse enemy. He sees the baseball world round him threw child inocents seeing his skills as supeerier to every one. Think Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham. His qwik tempurr shows when he looses it is because he got no support from his team and so he blaims every one but him. And in these letters to his pal Al he shows how all too human he is even as he shows no skill with girls his team mates his manager or at writing. No atemped is made to kleen up miss-spelled words or fix up bad grammer. These letters show a glimpse into the great game of baseball threw the eyes of some one who played for Charles Comiskey, ohner of the White Sox and against Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson.

You dont have to be a fan of the game to like this book. In fact I never knowed what a fadeaway fast ball was until I red this book. It is a fast ball that when the hitter hits it it fades away over the fence. And it can be red in a lot of ways. As historik fikshun a baseball book or a caractor study that shows that athaletes even then lived in a difrent world then ours. You can't not like this book.

Hily reckomended.

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much like Cervantes dialog of the dogs if Cervantes grew up in 1900's Chicago near 35th and Shields and dogs played baseball instead of cards. Extremely funny and revealing portrait of a poorly educated baseball player who wins every game but the ones he loses. Lardner was a sports writer who knew baseball players well and it's not clear if he loved or hated them - but it is clear that he understood them well. If you are interested in the vernacular of the time - you're in for a treat. Larder's soldier-player is a complete fool who is unable to understand why he's the butt of pranks whilst explaining the jokes in hilarious detail. I remember my grandfather telling me great stories of the jokes fellers of that time used to play on each other and this book is a bible of great boners. Being taught German instead of French, exchanging love letters with Marie Antoinette and other such pranks are all described in hilarious detail by the victim of his own ignorance and it makes for a great read. Groucho's voice is heard often and it's well known that Groucho read Lardner - the two share a sense of humor. I can never get enough Groucho or Lardner - if you're dangerously at risk of taking yourself too seriously or you lack the ability to distinguish purple prose from sincere thought - give this a spin and put a little mustard on it - hold the ketchup. Lardner lacks none of the psychological insight of more famous writers and his prose is every bit as vivid as more literary highbrows - but he is dated by the heavily stylized prose that makes him anachronistic and nearly forgotten. Very re-readable and very fun - Lardner ranks, for me at least, with the most enjoyable short story writers.

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed this fictional collection of letters, primarily because of the humor and the history. Ring Lardner's character Jack Keefe writes these letters as the country bumpkin, ala Mark Twain's Keokuk Post letters. This was apt for ballplayers of the deadball era, who were less educated than today's players. Shoeless Joe is a near contemporary example for Jack.

A lot of the humor comes from the manipulations of Jack by his manager and other players. Lardner emphasizes this by having Jack declare in one letter that he absolutely won't do something and in the next that he is, and of course it was his choice. I also derived quite a bit of humor in Jack's descriptions of left handed pitchers and other players on both teams.

The history of baseball in a two year period, 1913 and 1914, is well told by what happens behind the scenes. When the fictional Jack reports on a game, the outcome is based on a real game played by the Chicago White Sox, and the players he mentions performed as described. This is especially telling when, towards the end of the story, Jack is convinced to participate in the 1913-1914 World Tour. The US stops are covered and, again, accurate, including two games in Seattle and Tacoma cancelled on account of rain.

The only drawback for me was the extensive offseason coverage of Jack's trials, including a repeated discussion of a lease in Bedford. I understand this collection has also been turned into a series of comic strips - I would wager that most of the non-baseball stuff was left out.

The letters were first published in the Saturday Evening Post, and had a large following. The book, reprinting these, sold less well at the time, but it is in that form that this work survives. Highly recommended for fans of baseball's deadball era.

[Rozzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just had the strangest experience. I volunteer on a "helping" website to which people write emails asking for advice. I clicked on there five minutes ago to look at the queue of incoming messages and pick one to which to respond. And so help me God the letter, from an Indian immigrant to Canada, could have been copied verbatim from a Ring Lardner story. I've lived with Lardner for more than five decades. I know the rhythms and accents of his prose like I know the back of my hand. And here I'm reading this modern letter of today that's channeling the original, the inimitable Ring Lardner.

The experience pointed out to me a number of interesting things. First, how absolutely realistic Lardner was in writing his stories. There's a vernacular that Lardner obviously had down pat before he ever left for New York. Not a high schoolish fakery like Hemingway's prose. No. A very sensitive feeling for a very real and realistic prose style and rhythm that covered a lot of ground with very plain and simple people. I didn't come from that kind of background. Lardner's prose, when I was in high school, was just another strange and atmospheric concoction. I've lived a long time since then, and now I can appreciate the quality of Lardner's ear and his capacity to listen and sing out when he tried to create his stories.

Very weird. I'm reading this cry for help and there's no question it's not Nathanael West, not "Miss Lonelyhearts" material. It's Lardner. Pure Lardner. And it's still really here and now, not gone, not part of history. It's a plain modern day fact that's probably all around us.

[Todd Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would qualify You Know Me Al by sports writer Ring Lardner as a book of its time (that ‘time’ being a century ago). The book was published in 1916 and consists of a set of fictional letters from professional baseball player, Jack Keefe, to his friend Al.

Jack is a semi-literate, big, dumb jock who makes it into the major league as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. He continually gets himself into difficulties of one type or another and describes his misadventures to his friend in a way that I’d characterize as … supremely lacking in self-awareness. The book is considered to be humorous and plays off of Jack’s low IQ and inability to recognize when he is being manipulated or cheated.

I gather (from Wiki) that newspaper readers at the time ate this stuff up and that Lardner ultimately wrote 26 of these stories (six of which appear in this book) and it was later turned into a syndicated comic strip. Lardner eventually became bored with the genre and it faded into semi-obscurity (except among baseball enthusiasts, where it still has somewhat of a fanbase).

For me, You Know Me Al is a fossil of a book, in that it provides a glimpse into an era and mindset that are now extinct. The humor, situations and use of language are quaint and outmoded when read today. While I didn’t think the ‘humor’ was particularly amusing, it did provide a bit of insight into what people once thought was funny (apparently that consisted of humiliating someone to their face without their knowledge).

You can download the book for free if you’re inclined from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52670

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keefe's "voice" captured perfectly on this version of the audiobook

Read by Barry Kraft
Duration: 3 hours.
Publisher: Book of the Road (August 1990)

You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters consists of a series of rather detailed letters written by a bush-league ballplayer named Jack Keefe. Keefe has been called up from the Terre Haute team to join the Chicago White Sox. He is writing to one of his former bush-league teammates in Bedford, IN.

Keefe is truly a country bumpkin, a rube, a bumbling fool who does not understand the more sophisticated world of the major leagues, but who still succeeds based on the strength of his pitching arm. The reader gets a kick out of seeing the world through his eyes but really understanding the situations he is in, similar to Forrest Gump, except that Jack does not have a disability - he is just ignorant.

The audio version I heard (Book of the Road's version) is wonderfully performed by veteran Shakespearean actor Barry Kraft. Kraft captures his self-confidence, Hoosier country-boy accent and innocence perfectly. To me, he will forever be the voice of Jack Keefe.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baseball a hundred years ago wasn’t really much different than it is today. Only the names have changed. Talented pitcher Jack Keefe tells this story in the form of letters to his friend Al back in their hometown. Jack begins below the major leagues, but gets there with the White Sox. Jack shows his personality by his own descriptions of actions and events. Don’t expect him to spell well or use the finest grammar, but frequently laugh at his choices and apparent delusion about who and what he really is. It may help if you know names like Cobb, Lajoie, Matthewson, and Comisky, and have some rudimentary knowledge of baseball, but this is an enjoyable book about Jack’s life changing as his circumstances change. He faces baseball issues, management issues, women issues, and general life issues as a young man who shows himself to be naïve and not completely honest with himself about who he is. Good fun, well written in a voice that seems genuine for Jack, and definitely standing the test of time.

[Robert Poor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in book form in 1916, Ring Lardner's short stories written from the point of view of Jack "the Busher" Keefe, an uneducated, charismatic, exasperating hayseed embarking on a professional baseball career with the Chicago White Sox, remain as humorous, touching, and relevant today as they were over 100 years ago. Collected together in "You Know Me Al" these wonderful anecdotes written as letters home to his old pal Al are about as charming and all-American as anything by Mark Twain.

Twenty years ago or so, "Sports Illustrated" listed the one hundred greatest sports books ever written, and "You Know Me Al" was ranked #5. In fact, I just looked up the list (which is from 2002). Here is the Top 10 with a brief description of each as written by SI:

1. The Sweet Science BY A.J. LIEBLING (1956)

Pound-for-pound the top boxing writer of all time, Liebling is at his bare-knuckled best here, bobbing and weaving between superb reporting and evocative prose. The fistic figures depicted in this timeless collection of New Yorker essays range from champs such as Rocky Marciano and Sugar Ray Robinson to endearing palookas and eccentric cornermen on the fringes of the squared circle. Liebling's writing is efficient yet stylish, acerbic yet soft and sympathetic. ("The sweet science, like an old rap or the memory of love, follows its victims everywhere.") He leavens these flourishes with an eye for detail worthy of Henry James. The one-two combination allows him to convey how boxing can at once be so repugnant and so alluring.

2. The Boys of Summer BY ROGER KAHN (1971)

A baseball book the same way Moby Dick is a fishing book, this account of the early-'50s Brooklyn Dodgers is, by turns, a novelistic tale of conflict and change, a tribute, a civic history, a piece of nostalgia and, finally, a tragedy, as the franchise's 1958 move to Los Angeles takes the soul of Brooklyn with it. Kahn writes eloquently about the memorable games and the Dodgers' penchant for choking--"Wait Till Next Year" is their motto--but the most poignant passages revisit the Boys in autumn. An auto accident has rendered catcher Roy Campanella a quadriplegic. Dignified trailblazer Jackie Robinson is mourning the death of his son. Sure-handed third baseman Billy Cox is tending bar. No book is better at showing how sports is not just games.

3. Ball Four BY JIM BOUTON (1970)

Though a declining knuckleballer, Bouton threw nothing but fastballs in his diary of the 1969 season. Pulling back the curtain on the seriocomic world of the big leagues, he writes honestly and hilariously about baseball's vices and virtues. At a time when the sport was still a secular religion, it was an act of heresy to portray players "pounding the Ol' Budweiser," "chasin' skirts" or "poppin' greenies." (And that was during games.) Bouton's most egregious act of sacrilege--his biting observations about former teammate Mickey Mantle--led to his banishment from the "Yankee family." But beyond the controversy, Ball Four was, finally, a love story. Bouton writes, "You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."

4. Friday Night Lights BY H.G. BISSINGER (1990)

Schoolboy football knits together the West Texas town of Odessa in the late 1980s. But as Permian High grows into a dynasty, the locals' sense of proportion blows away like a tumbleweed. A brilliant look at how Friday-night lights can lead a town into darkness.

5. You Know Me Al BY RING LARDNER (1916)

This collection of letters from a fictional (and grammatically challenged) pitcher named Jack Keefe, originally published in installments in The Saturday Evening Post, earned Lardner a spot in the pantheon of american humorists alongside Mark Twain and Will Rogers.

6. A Season on the Brink BY JOHN FEINSTEIN (1986)

Bob Knight still curses the day he granted the author unfettered access to his program. Feinstein's year as an honorary Hoosier yielded an unsparing portrait of Indiana's combustible coach and spawned the best-selling sports book of all time.

7. Semi-Tough BY DAN JENKINS (1972)

Running back Billy Clyde Puckett of TCU and the Giants calls himself the "humminest sumbitch that ever carried a football." Puckett is also the funniest, and the dialogue in this raunchy novel still crackles. Also read Jenkins's golf novel, Dead Solid Perfect.

8. Paper Lion BY GEORGE PLIMPTON (1965)

No one today does what the fearless Plimpton once did with regularity. Here, in his first Walter Mitty-esque effort, the author of the equally brilliant Shadow Box and The Bogey Man infiltrates the Detroit training camp as a quarterback with no arm, no legs and no shot.

9. The Game BY KEN DRYDEN (1983)

Hall of fame goalie Dryden was always different. A Cornell grad, he led Montreal to six Stanley Cups, then at 26 sat out a year to prepare for the bar exam. His book is different too: a well-crafted account of his career combined with a meditation on hockey's special place in Canadian culture.

10. Fever Pitch BY NICK HORNBY (1991)

How can the rest of the world summon such passion for soccer? You'll understand after reading Hornby's deeply personal and wonderfully witty account of an otherwise normal bloke who develops a full-blown obsession with Arsenal, the English Premier League team.

[Celia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is hilarious, especially good because I splurged for the audible edition. The audible narrator had just the dead-pan voice to make this book GREAT. Also, if my husband likes a book, I have to give it at least a 4!!

Baseball and Redneck at its funniest.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great vintage baseball book based on a cartoon series about a bush league palooka by Ring Lardner. Fun to read at the beginning of baseball season