The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring W. Lardner, 1914-1919

by Ring Lardner, George W. Hilton (Editor)

This is an annotated and copiously illustrated edition of 24 baseball stories by Ring W. Lardner, including the six classic stories later collected as You Know Me Al . Two-thirds of the stories describe real teams, real players, and real situations, and the annotation and illustrations serve to identify the references of early twentieth-century major league baseball that Lardner covered as a reporter.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

648 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

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

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't read this whole thing - it's just too massive. It's a collection of letters from fictional White Sox pitcher Jack Keefe, detailing aspects of his baseball and marital exploits. It involves real players and managers and owners, so it's a good way to learn about baseball's early years. But mostly it's about an overconfident (spelling-challenged) bumpkin who keeps finding himself in precarious situations, including a strained marriage and bankruptcy and getting into scuffles with Charles Comiskey. Written in the 1910s, the collection is known as the "You Know Me Al" stories.