Ring Lardner's wonderful epistolary novel is not merely a seminal baseball book, it is one of the funniest, most savage satires ever written. Jack Keefe is a physically gifted but mentally dense pitching prospect for the Chicago White Sox. In his unintentionally revealing letters home to his friend Al, he repeatedly demonstrates that his overweening ego makes him completely immune to sarcasm from coaches and fellow players, time and again mistaking their acid comments for genuine praise. The letters--replete with chaotic syntax and, shall we say, creative spelling--trace Jack's rise from swell headed phenom to stunned bush leaguer, back to the majors and to stardom. Along the way he meets many of the great baseball figures of the day--Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Charlie Comiskey, etc.--attracts and loses several Baseball Annies (his success with the ladies not surprisingly following his fortunes with the team) and all the while remains blissfully unaware of the less than innocent intentions and innuendoes of those around him.
In Lardner's day, the best writers on a newspaper were often to be found on the Sports page (This is no longer the case, particularly since Red Smith--the single most underrated writer in American Literature--passed away.) and Lardner was certainly among the best of this breed. Though he did not really sour on sports until the disillusionment of the Black Sox scandal, this book is deliciously crusty and acerbic. Though writers like Mark Harris (see Orrin's review of Bang the Drum Slowly) and Jim Brosnan and Jim Bouton are often credited with being the first to treat sports realistically, You Know Me, Al offers a clear eyed look at the kind of selfish, egocentric, undereducated, blowhard who remains the norm in sports to this day.
This is a truly funny book and a marvelous corrective to hero worship.
(Reviewed:07-Mar-00)
Grade: (A)
