Fictional series of letters from a popular baseball hero to his friend. Humorous collection showcases Lardner as a satirical master at the peak of his form.
Amazon.com 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.
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Rated by buyers - You Know Me Al
This is a classic. Every baseball fan with a sense of humour should take time to read this great book by Ring Lardner.
Rated by buyers - Entertaining But Pointless
Ring Lardner's place as one of the United States' most underrated fiction writers may be from producing almost exclusively short fiction. There, his gift for colloquialism, narrative voice, and an ironic distance between creator and character shines brightest.
Even his one well-regarded novel, 1916's "You Know Me Al", speaks to Lardner's strengths as a short-distance writer. It's an engaging but thin first-person narrative about a headstrong rookie pitcher, Jack Keefe, who makes it to baseball's American League as a starter for the Chicago White Sox. Talented as he is, his selfish attitude puts him in several tight fixes which he wiggles out of with the blissful ignorance of Inspector Clouseau.
It helps the busher is too dense to pick up on the ridicule he draws when getting off to a bad start, like in this sly, characteristic exchange with his manager:
"I says Why don't you get a catcher? He says We don't need no catcher when you're pitching because you can't get nothing past their bats. Then he says You better leave your uniform in here when you go out subsequent inning or Cobb will steal it off your back. I says My arm is sore. He says Use your other one and you'll do just as good."
Mention of Cobb, as in Tyrus Raymond, is important because it cues one of Lardner's most successful devices in "Al", as read at this remove in time. A number of real-life players, managers, coaches, and club owners put in appearances, sometimes in extended episodes. Keefe clashes with parsimonious owner Charles Comiskey over a couple hundred dollars and hangs his losses on teammates, including Buck Weaver, who ironically is blamed by Keefe for throwing a game for a friend. [The real Weaver would go down in history, three years after this was published, as the one "Black Sox" player who wouldn't do precisely that.]
One wonders how Weaver, Comiskey, and the others reacted to "Al". They must have read it; it was the most popular thing Lardner, a famous writer, produced in his lifetime, very first in magazine serial installments and then as a novel. Did they enjoy reading of themselves and get the joke was on Keefe?
"Al's" format, as series of letters written by Keefe to a hometown buddy, allows for a good deal of hilarity in its deliberate unconsciousness, much of which holds together today. But as a story and a character study, it's quite thin. It boils down to this: Jack is a jerk, he's vain, and he's cheap. This last point gets pushed many times, especially during the book's creaky second half, where the now-established pitcher must share the wealth with a wife and son.
Lardner's validity as a short-story writer includes the way he holds true to the voice of his central character, no matter how limited or blinkered. Here, it's a liability as the longer investment in Keefe doesn't pay off. I found myself tiring of this guy's company before long, and wishing that Lardner had traded him for Alibi Ike, not my favorite Lardner character either but a more interesting one, more amusing and sympathetic.
Even reading this as a collection of short stories is unsatisfying, as the sections don't so much end as trail off. When we leave Keefe, he is getting ready to sail "a round the world and back" on a baseball tour. He is the same guy we met at the beginning, perhaps a realistic treatment of his fellow man by Lardner but not an arresting one.
Rated by buyers - On the National Pastime
At one time early in the very first part of the 20th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. That was a time that the name Ring Lardner was well known in sports writing and literary circles. The sports writing part was easy because that was his beat. The literary part is much harder to recognize but clearly the character of Jack Keefe has become an American classic. Does one need to be a baseball fan to appreciate this work? Hell, no. We all know, in sports or otherwise, this guy Keefe. Right? You know the guy with some talent who has no problem blaming the other guy for mistakes while he (or she) is pure as the driven snow. That is the concept that drives these stories told in the form of letters to Al, his buddy back home.
The language, the malapropisms and the schemes all evoke an early more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such a character based on today's sport's ethic. They would all have a spokesperson `spinning' their take on the matters of the day. The only one that might have come close is Nuke LaRouche in the movie Bull Durham but as that movie progressed Nuke was getting `wise'. Read these stories. More than once.
Rated by buyers - 'There ain't no extra charge for using the forks'
In the early days before ballplayers made a few billion dollars a year there was a young pitcher by the name of Jack Keefe who got called up from the minors to pitch for Comiskey's Chicago White Sox. He tells the story of this and his whole season in a series of letters to his friend ,Al. These letters are written in a special colloquial style and include the spelling and grammatical errors of the young pitcher, and also his quite surprising startling and humorous language. This is what this classic work of American humour is largely about. And while it is filled with sarcasm and a kind of mockery at the arrogance and naievete of its main character it also presents a picture of the baseball world of those days in the terms and language of that world.
A small American classic.
Rated by buyers - The world has changed. Baseball... not as much.
Athletes are much more educated & sophisticated today. But especially in baseball there are are still the fun-loving, ignorant, quick to anger, characters. Like Jack, for example. He is just dumb, lacking self awareness but kind of loveable & fun to party with. You'd root for him. What could be better. Talking baseball, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, that cheap owner, Charles Comiskey etc. Listening to the audio version as I drove along, I was smiling. It jogged my own memories of baseball seasons past, even though it is almost 90 years old. This was all before World War I, the Black Sox Scandal & even Babe Ruth.
- You Know Me Al
- Entertaining But Pointless