Ring Lardner Tonight: Part 2 of John Lardner's Introduction to "You Know Me Al"

"[A]ll the essential truth about ball-playing can be found in You Know Me Al. Its broader values to one side, there has never been a sounder baseball book. . . . [I]f you stop to pick over the accounts of ball games, you see that each detail is correct in relation to place, weather, time of year, and the hitting, pitching, or fielding idiosyncrasies of each of a hundred players. Baseball strategy is set down as accurately as the speech and characters of Keefe, his friends, his girls, and his in-laws." (John Lardner)

"Superficially, ball players are not quite the same kind of people today as they were in Keefe's day. Present times have developed a distinct athlete class, to which most professional players belong -- a group of men at least semi-educated in classrooms as well as lavishly trained since early youth in sports. . . . [T]he new athlete class has greatly refined and expanded baseball culture, and its wordiness has infected fans and baseball writers and sportscasters (who to some extent have re-infected the players). The vocabulary of the game has become swollen with expertise. . . . But all the essential truth about ball-playing can be found in You Know Me Al. . . . "

-- from the second part of John Lardner's Introduction

by Ken

You'll be relieved to learn that tonight's installment of John Lardner's Introduction to You Know Me Al is substantially shorter than last night's. I tried to find the least disruptive breaking point, and that's how it worked out. We've already had John's effort to place this undertaking of his father's in some social and literary context, and read Virginia Woolf's tribute, notably:

Mr. Lardner has talents of a remarkable order. With extraordinary ease and aptitude, with the quickest strokes, the surest touch, the sharpest insight, he lets Jack Keefe the baseball player cut out his own outline, fill in his own depths, until the figure of the foolish, boastful, innocent athlete lives before us. As he babbles out his mind on paper there rise up friends, sweethearts, the scenery, town, and country -- all surround him and make him up in his completeness.

And I found John extremely persuasive in turning F. Scott Fitzgerald's seemingly generous but really notably grudging and back-handed appreciation. H. L. Mencken's rings significantly truer. John also made excellent sense of the issue of language in his father's work. At this point he pulls back from the sophisticated literary analyses. As I've suggested, I'm kind of awe-struck by his analysis of how baseball and baseball players had changed between 1914, when Ring began writing the busher letters for the Saturday Evening Post, and 1958. And for as much as we think the game has for better and worse been revolutionized since John's time, it seems in fact like a mere difference in degree beyond what he describes.

Finally, before we proceed to the main event, I have to say that I find John not just a dandy writer but a spectacular companion. How can a person resist a parenthetical note like this?

Thirty-odd years ago, my father and mother worried and conferred when I was caught reading a novel about flaming youth called The Plastic Age. But my father was even more worried when he caught me reading a baseball novel called Won in the Ninth. He didn't take it away from me, but he warned me not to let my mind be soiled by corrupt observation of baseball procedures.

FOR PART 2 OF JOHN LARDNER'S INTRODUCTION
TO YOU KNOW ME AL, CLICK HERE

RING LARDNER'S YOU KNOW ME AL

John Lardner's Introduction (1958), Part 1 and Part 2

Chapter I: A Busher's Letters Home
Part 1: Ring's Preface, and Jack's letters of September 6 and December 14 and 16
Part 2: The busher reaches the bigs -- March 2, 7, 9, and 16
Part 3: Countdown to Opening Day -- March 26 and April 1, 4, 7, and 10
Part 4: Jack makes his big-league debut -- April 11 and 15
Part 5: A major development for Jack -- April 19, 25, and 29

THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, and JEAN SHEPHERD TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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