You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters - Softcover

Lardner, Ring

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1613216939 ISBN 13: 9781613216934

Publisher: Sports Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

One of the classic baseball stories, You Know Me Al, first published in 1914, tells the story of the fictional Jack Keefe, a bush league baseball player who earns a trip to the majors to pitch for the Chicago White Sox. Set in pre World War I, the book is comprised of letters that Keefe sends to his old pal” Al. Through the letters, the self-centered Keefe reveals his regular struggles to maintain his position in the big leagues as well as his personal life and juggle his financial difficulties. Nevertheless, the tales from on and off the field as he travels with the team are full of wit, insight, and entertainment. They include Keefe’s encounters with baseball legends such as Ty Cobb, Charles Comiskey, Walter Johnson, and Eddie Cicotte.

In this edition of the book, which includes a foreword by acclaimed writer John Thorn, readers can relive all of the glory of this historic era of baseball through the eyes of one of Ring Lardner’s most comical characters, a century after his creation!

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About this title

About the Author:

Ring Lardner was a sports columnist and acclaimed short-story writer. He worked for several newspapers throughout his career, including the South Bend Times, St. Louis Sporting News, Boston American, and Chicago Tribune. His stories were notoriously filled with satire, grammatical errors, and everyday events. Lardner passed away in 1933, at the age of 48.

John Thorn is the official historian of Major League Baseball. Apart from his creation, with Pete Palmer, of Total Baseball, he is often visible on ESPN, MLBTV, the History Channel, and other television outlets as a sports authority and commentator. He was also a major on-screen presence in and chief consultant to Ken Burns’s 18½-hour PBS film, Baseball. Thorn cowrote The Hidden Game of Baseball, which established alternative statistics later recognized and adopted as official by Major League Baseball, notably OPS. His many baseball books over the past three decades also include Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame, The Game for All America, and Our Game, a history of the game that also supplies the title for his twice-weekly blog at MLB.com. In 2011 Simon & Schuster published his major work, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: A Secret History of the Early Game.

From the Back Cover:

"You Know me Al" is a classic of baseball--the game and the community. Jack Keefe, one of literature's greatest characters, is talented, brash, and conceited. Self-assured and imperceptive, impervious to both advice and sarcasm, Keefe rises to the heights, but his inability to learn makes for his undoing. Through a series of letters from this bush-league pitcher to his not-quite-anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious.

Nostalgic in its view of pre-World War I America--a time before the "live" ball, a time filled with names like Ty Cobb, Charles Comiskey, Walter Johnson, and Eddie Cicotte--this is not a simple period piece. It is about competition, about the ability to reason, and most of all it is about being human. First published in 1914, "You Know Me Al" says as much to us about ourselves today as it did seventy-five years ago.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sports Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1613216939
• ISBN 13: 9781613216934
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208