Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner

Well, the boys of summer are already stretching themselves out down at the various training camps in order to get ready for yet another baseball season. I no longer have the intense interest in baseball that I had when I was a kid I still like to read old Ring Lardner's stories from the time when baseball was literally the national pastime, although like today not without its scandals, escapades and nutty characters. Of course, being from Boston I might just have to note in passing that our boys of summer, the beloved Red Sox of fabled Fenway Park (how is that for a Grantland Rice-like sports phrase?), are the reigning WORLD CHAMPIONS. Come and get us, if you can. In the meantime I suggest the above-titled book for you baseball-starved fans. This volume contains virtually every important baseball story that Ring Larner wrote, except the central character in the You Know Me, Al series Jack Keefe's wartime service and baseball world tour stories. As we approach another baseball season it is nice to look back to a 'simpler' time in the saga of baseball in this country. Savor these stories. Perhaps read them on one or more of those long winter evenings or in the interval between 'hot stove' league discussions. At one time early in the first part of the 20th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. That was a time when 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. Other stories here have also provided exemplars of the type like Hurry Kane, Alibi Ike, Harmony, What's That Noise? and so on. Does one need to be a baseball fan to appreciate this work? Hell, no. We all know, in sports or otherwise, this guy Keefe (and the various characters in the other stories who mimic his type). Right? You know the guy (or gal) with some talent who nevertheless 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 the You Know Me, Al stories told in the form of letters to Al, his buddy back home in the sticks. That format applies as well to the other stories. The language, the malapropisms and the schemes used by Lardner all evoke an earlier more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such characters now based on today's sport's ethic. Such innocent antics would just not ring true. The athletes would have a spokesperson `spinning' their take on the matters of the day. The only character 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.

Nobody wrote more good baseball stories than Ring Lardner, nor has anybody written better ones. This book brings them all together in one volume for the first time. It begins with the "You Know Me Al" stories, consisting of letters from Jack Keefe to his friend Al. More than two-hundred pages are devoted to these, which is a bit of a problem; after the first fifty, Lardner has established that Jack is a blowhard with no spine and isn't very bright, and the theme starts to pall. The stories must have worked much better published individually or in groups of a few. The other stories are unrelieved successes, however. It would be, I think, going too far to say that Lardner uses baseball as a metaphor for life, but baseball is just the setting that he uses to show us things about his characters, and about human nature. The writing is superb, and the stories bear out the frequently-made observation about the excellence of Lardner's ear for vernacular American speech. Very entertaining and highly recommended.

First published in book form in 1992, Ring Around The Bases anthologizes the baseball short stories of famous twentieth century baseball expert and sports journalist Ring Lardner (1885-1933). Featuring an additional, previously uncollected short story in this outstanding 644-page paperback edition (edited and with an introduction by Matthew J. Bruccoli who is the Emily Brown Jefferies Professor of English at the University of South Carolina - Columbia), Ring Around The Bases, offers insights not only into the great game, but the characters of those who played it. Drawing heavily upon Lardner's lengthy experience reporting the sport, these tales make turn of the century sports excitement truly come alive. Ring Around The Bases is an important addition to any academic, or community library Sports History collection in general -- and the personal reading lists of dedicated baseball fans in particular.