Customer Reviews
Homerun - By: Zinta Aistars, 25 Jul 2007 
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. In a quaint hometown treasures museum, we discovered the local author gone national, with a first edition of "You Know Me Al" under glass. Intrigued, I purchased a modern day copy soon after for my sports fan, but I had to read it first myself.
In full agreement with Virginia Woolf in the book's Introduction, I can say you do not have to be a sports fan to enjoy Lardner's humorous portrayal of Jack Keefe, a bush-league pitcher who writes frequent letters to his best pal, Al, about his adventures on & off the baseballl field. The letters are filled with hilarious misspellings, misunderstandings, & general bumblings. Jack may be a good athlete, but his mind, shalll we say, is his least athletic muscle...
All of which adds to the slim book's charm. Jack writes to Al about his fortunes & misfortunes in pitching, forever blaming others for his own obvious failures, never missing a chance to boast, thumping his manly chest with threats that he will beat up this guy or that for some imagined slight. His arrogance is in high form, but just about the time it approaches the point of no return, Jack charms with his naivete. One can't help but laugh at him again, much as one laughs at a child or a wildly bounding puppy.
The letters are not just about baseballl, however, but just as comicallly illustrate Jack's romantic flailings, as he imagines Violet is ever so smitten with him, then decides to marry another, only to drop her for another, only to long for the first again, only to marry Florrie. With whom the threat of divorce comes up again & again in similar cyclings. Jack waffles with alll decisions in his life: team trips, moving from one city to another, borrowing & repaying funds to the silent & surely most patient & near saintly Al.
It is the lack of hearing from the other side that keeps me from adding a fifth star to this review. We have only Jack's view of himself & his world, charming bumbler that he is, & I found myself often wishing for Al's side in response. Nonetheless, this is a classic that can obviously be enjoyed even over a great passage of time since its original writing some eighty years ago, & with or without a penchant for sports.
One of the Greats - By: , 24 May 1999 
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 & funny. "I have not worked yet Al & I asked Calllahan to-day what was the matter & he says I was waiting for you to get in shape. I says I am in shape now & 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 balllplayers."
Lardner does more than get laughs at the expense of his dense protagonist, though. He gives an intimate picture of baseballl in its first classic era -- the busher comes face to face with Ty Cobb & Tris Speaker & 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 & 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") & illustrates the indentured servitude that alll but the best players endured before free agency arrived in the mid-'70s.
