You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters

First great success of Ring Lardner was ""You Know Me Al"", a fictional series of letters from a popular baseball hero to his friend, slowly revealing the hero as a semiliterate, crude, conceited, self-deceiving boob. This work was created while Lardner was writing a sports column for The Chicago Tribune, first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. It was later published in the book form in 1916. You Know Me Al shows Lardner as a satirical master: a fine and misanthropic storyteller with a excellent feel for the niceties of characters and speech.

In his day, Ring Lardner was a legendary humorist (a job-description he disavowed), and You Know Me Al shows why everyone loved him so. In the letters of Jack Keefe, a bush-league pitcher who finally gets his chance in the majors, Lardner shows not only a faultless ear, but also a keen eye for the amusing details of human folly. Keefe is no comical bumbler--he has talent--but also possesses astonishing naïvete, and a lack of self-awareness that is unerringly hilarious. The busher blames everyone but himself for his failures (a trait that Lardner uses to wonderful comic effect in the story "Alibi Ike"). Still, thanks to Keefe's mixture of hubris and puppy-dog trust, you want to see him come out all right.

Lardner--who played a role in breaking the infamous "Black Sox" scandal of 1919--wrote You Know Me Al while covering pro baseball in the teens; for baseball fans, the book is an intriguing glimpse into the past. Athletes haven't changed much, poor devils. They're just as funny as ever, only richer.