You Know Me, Al

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" unde......more

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. -......more

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......more

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......more

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.......more