From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Ring Lardner’s “Baseball Round-Up”

Short Book Clips

Baseball Round-Up -You Know Me Al and other stories, Ring Lardner

At one time early in the first part of the 20^th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. Sand lot, back of school, back of the barn, out in an abandoned elysian field after a wheat or corn harvest had left some space for gentler work, hell, even on mean immigrant city “stick ball” streets (where else would such a “sport” make sense with so much glass around to be broken by stray balls, and angry swing for the fences bats), any place boys, men, a few girls (righteously trying to keep up with the boys), could collect a few numbers, get out a bat and balls, and field two teams of indeterminate numbers (no, Billy can’t play today he is being punished, Joe had to work overtime tonight, skewing the sides) you could see on any brisk spring night, hazy summer evening, or leafy fall day a game in progress, out in Muncie,  over in Lansing, up in Madison, down in Biloxi, up in Portland, down in Birmingham, and right in Chicago’s South Side, New York’s East Side and Boston’s Southie you could see a pick-up game being played. Even, or maybe especially on, those mean negro streets and gabacho latino streets hidden from main America view you could see a pick-up game being played. Played in all cases for social graces, played for town bragging rights, played for who buys the first couple of rounds at the Dublin Grille, Jimmy Jake’s Diner, Joe’s Bar and Grille, Sam’s juke joint and Angelo’s back yard still hidden from that main America view. And played, American boy dream (white/negro/brown/red/yellow dream) for keeps and big dough (those days big dough today just tip money, walking daddy money) in the majors, the American and National Leagues, in cities that had enough of a crowd to fill those not sand lot, not back of barn, not vacant lot, not mean streets stadia. And grown men could grow old (and fat) off their earnings. And other grown men could earn a living and a spot in the limelight (if they were good) describing the heroic (there is no other word for it) exploits of the local batsmen for the reading public who patronized (and they did in great numbers) the sports pages of the New York Post, the Muncie Daily Gazette, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun, and their kindred.                     

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. He knew the front, back, side, up and down of the sport describing the foibles of the sick, lame, lazy, hale and hearty who took up the glove and tried to swing for those elusive fences, and those who wanted to from bush to big leagues. With classic simple (well maybe not so simple but simple compared to today) character types easily recognized on the prima donna field of dreams (and easily recognized in life too).

The literary part is much harder to recognize but clearly the character of Jack Keefe from his most famous series, You Know Me, Al 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, right? You know the guy with some talent who has no problem blaming the other guy for mistakes ( he should have caught that easy snag, hey, the sun got in my eye, the first baseman was supposed to call for it, I tripped over the bag, that was the luckiest home run that guy ever made) while he (or she) is pure as the driven snow ( I had a cold, the baby kept me up,  woman trouble, no further explanation needed, too much to drink last night and on and on). Take a look at any of today‘s sports headlines (hell, any headlines), although the excuses are more mannered and more inscrutable per snarly press agent magic.

That is the concept that drives these stories told in the form of letters to Al, his buddy back home, his hick home town out in mainstream Mid-America, the part of America that was to be most affected by the move to cities and the inner suburbs once farm life dried up. The language, the malapropisms and the schemes all evoke an earlier more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such a character based on today’s sports ethic. The athletes would have a spokesperson ‘spinning’ their take on the matters of the day, and the owners, managers, coaches, agents, bat boys, season ticket-holders, average bleachers beer drinkers, and other assorted  hangers-on as well. The only one that might come close today is Nuke LaRouche in the movie Bull Durham but as that movie progressed Nuke was getting ‘wise.’ Read these stories. Read them more than once.  

There is also no question that aside from a deft ear as a sportswriter that Ring Lardner also had an ear for the foibles and frustrations of the newly rising middle class of the post- World War I Midwestern heartland. This was not the land of Fitzgerald’s or Hemingway’s “Lost Generation” sophisticates, making Paris stops on the grand tour or trying to crash the Mayfair swells crowd out in West Egg, but  of those left behind trying to scratch out an existence anyway they could in small cities or certain sections of big cities selling shoes or insurance. However, rather than beat up on the ‘yokels’ straight up as one would expect from such easy literary targets Lardner pokes and prods at their pretensions in a fairly harmless way, at least on the surface.  However on re-reading these stories recently I found myself saying ‘ouch’ to the literary stabs in the backs that he thrust at his victims in stories like Gullible’s Travels (a title which aptly sums up my comment) and The Big Town. Read on.