Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner; Edited with an Introduction by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Foreword by Ring Lardner

A complete anthology of baseball fiction by Ring Lardner features short stories that capture the integral role of baseball in American life.

Like his contemporary Damon Runyon, Lardner (1885-1933) began his career as a sportswriter, and, as this collection attests, his journalistic background colors his keenly observed fiction. Gathered here are 32 short stories, a sketch performed in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies and some of Lardner's baseball reporting, including a generous selection on the notorious 1919 World Series. (One wonders at the subtitle's claim of inclusiveness, as Bruccoli's introduction claims that Lardner wrote 46 baseball stories.) Some of the entries are well known--"Alibi Ike," for example, and the Jack Keefe stories of You Know Me Al (1916)--while less familiar works include five more epistolary yarns featuring classic "busher" Keefe and his semiliterate braggadocio, and a similar series written in the '30s. Although a sameness of tone and focus makes extended reading of the volume tough going, most pieces hold up well individually. Lardner's bludgeon-like irony gives his writing an undeniable strength, and his turns of phrase pack a wallop. Who else would describe an umpire by writing that "he was so homely that dogs wouldn't live in the same town"? Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lardner was the first great American writer to see the diverse possibilities of baseball as a subject. Indeed, as Bruccoli writes in his introduction, "Lardner's 130 short stories, 46 of which are baseball stories, show a remarkable range." This volume collects all those diamond-related tales, including the famous Jack Keefe epistolary stories that made up the well-known volume You Know Me Al (1914), plus some prime journalistic pieces containing such eternally true statements as, "Baseball is a business, a mighty big one." They all display the writer's excellence in capturing the idiom and nuances of baseball talk. Recommended, despite some overlap with previous Lardner story collections.
- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.