You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters

Ring Lardner

ISBN 10: 0684136694 / ISBN 13: 9780684136691

Published by Macmillan Pub Co

About this Item

Binding tight and square, Covers have some small amount of creasing to corners. Pages are clean and unmarked.

Seller Inventory # 321121

Bibliographic Details

• Title: You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters
• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684136694
• ISBN 13: 9780684136691
• Binding: Paper Back
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

The career of an inept but impetuous baseball pitcher is recorded in letters to a friend

Review

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.