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You Know Me Al (Prairie State Books)
 
 
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You Know Me Al (Prairie State Books) (Paperback)

~ Ring Lardner (Author) "FRIEND AL: Well, Al old pal I suppose you seen in the paper where I been sold to the White Sox..." (more)
Key Phrases: happyest man, rist watch, takeing care, White Sox, San Francisco, New York (more...)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

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.

From Library Journal

Lardner's famous collection of humorous short stories gets the no-frills treatment from Dover's "Thrift Editions" series. A buck here buys a million dollars worth of laughs.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: University of Illinois Press (January 1, 1992)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0252062302
  • ISBN-13: 978-0252062308
  • Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,718,930 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Ring Lardner
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
FRIEND AL: Well, Al old pal I suppose you seen in the paper where I been sold to the White Sox. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
happyest man, rist watch, takeing care, ist team, hole trip, hole lot, real pitcher, training trip
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
White Sox, San Francisco, New York, Kid Gleason, Federal League, Los Angeles, Joe Hill, Terre Haute, Paso Robles, Central League, Sir Cashion
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This book cites 13 books:
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Ring Lardner by Ring Lardner
 

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Greats, May 24, 1999
By S. D. Brekke Jr. (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: YOU KNOW ME AL (Hudson River Editions) (Hardcover)
The travails of the boastful, blame-shifting, naive-unto-the-point-of-stupidity White Sox rookie first went into print 85 years ago. It's one of the miracles of 20th century fiction -- or a comment on the eternal childishness of America's national pastime -- that the bush leaguer's absurd confidences to a friend back home are still fresh and funny. "I have not worked yet Al and I asked Callahan to-day what was the matter and he says I was waiting for you to get in shape. I says I am in shape now and I notice that when I was pitching in practice this A.M. they did not hit nothing out of the infield. He says That was because you are so spread out that they could not get nothing past you. He says The way you are now you cover more ground than the grand stand. I says Is that so? And he walked away." Yeah, this is clearly the same sport where the portly John Kruk turned aside a question a few years ago about conditioning with the Bartlett's-worthy, "We're not athletes. We're ballplayers."

Lardner does more than get laughs at the expense of his dense protagonist, though. He gives an intimate picture of baseball in its first classic era -- the busher comes face to face with Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker and Walter Johnson with interesting results. But it's not a sentimental depiction of the age: Among those with whom the busher crosses paths is the famously parsimonious and autocratic White Sox owner, Charles Comiskey. The book gives a hint of the resentments that led his players to agree to throw a World Series (as they did a few years after Lardner wrote "You Know Me Al") and illustrates the indentured servitude that all but the best players endured before free agency arrived in the mid-'70s.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An inside look at turn-of-the-century professional baseball, December 23, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: You Know Me Al (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)
Ring Lardner was a newspaper sports writer in the early 1900s. He rode the trains with professional baseball players and joined in thier card games. "You Know Me Al" is a unique set of letters from a fictional rookie ball player to his friend Al back home. The book contains real teams and stats, but is a fast-reading fictional look at the lives of players. With everything from front office negotiations with Comiski to on-the-field trash talk, "You Know Me Al" is a must-read for baseball fans who miss the game of yesteryear.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A American Orijinol, February 10, 2007
This review is from: You Know Me Al (Paperback)
I had not never heard of Ring Lardner until a visit to his home town in Niles Michigan right near outside of Kalamazoo. Born in Niles Michigan in 1885 Lardner was a sports writer for the Chicago Tribyoon but he is best well known for these busher letters that he rote as instalmints for The Satirday Eevning Post.

The best letters were collected for this book You Know Me Al that were first published in 1914. It cronikles a bushers rise to the major league threw a serious of letters written to his pal Al in Bedford Illinoy. Jack Keefe is a right hander pitcher who has got some good stuf but he is offten his own worse enemy. He sees the baseball world round him threw child inocents seeing his skills as supeerier to every one. Think Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham. His qwik tempurr shows when he looses it is because he got no support from his team and so he blaims every one but him. And in these letters to his pal Al he shows how all too human he is even as he shows no skill with girls his team mates his manager or at writing. No atemped is made to kleen up miss-spelled words or fix up bad grammer. These letters show a glimpse into the great game of baseball threw the eyes of some one who played for Charles Comiskey, ohner of the White Sox and against Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson.

You dont have to be a fan of the game to like this book. In fact I never knowed what a fadeaway fast ball was until I red this book. It is a fast ball that when the hitter hits it it fades away over the fence. And it can be red in a lot of ways. As historik fikshun a baseball book or a caractor study that shows that athaletes even then lived in a difrent world then ours. You can't not like this book.

Hily reckomended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Lardner triples off the wall
Baseball a hundred years ago wasn't really much different than it is today. Only the names have changed. Read more
Published 7 months ago by S. Silverman

3.0 out of 5 stars A fun, easy read
The book profiles a talented fictitious baseball pitcher whose primary limitations are his shallowness, arrogance and bone-headedness. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Writeguy1

5.0 out of 5 stars You Know Me Al
This is a classic. Every baseball fan with a sense of humor should take time to read this great book by Ring Lardner.
Published 19 months ago by Jack D. Seay

3.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Bill Slocum

5.0 out of 5 stars On the National Pastime
At one time early in the first part of the 20th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. Read more
Published on November 23, 2007 by Alfred Johnson

5.0 out of 5 stars '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... Read more
Published on July 26, 2007 by Shalom Freedman

3.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more
Published on May 2, 2007 by JOHN GODFREY

4.0 out of 5 stars Homerun
Not being much of a sports fan, but for many years standing close beside one, I knew nothing of Ring Lardner until I visited Niles, Michigan, pursuing a story of my own. Read more
Published on January 8, 2007 by Zinta Aistars

4.0 out of 5 stars Keefe's "voice" captured perfectly on this version of the audiobook.
"You Know Me Al" consists of a series of rather detailed letters written by a bush-league ballplayer named Jack Keefe. Read more
Published on September 5, 2006 by DWD

5.0 out of 5 stars Amusing Baseball Fiction
This amusing look at baseball circa 1914 by sportswriter Ring Lardner (1885-1933) remains among the sport's top fiction. Read more
Published on December 24, 2005 by K.A.Goldberg

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