Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner

Like his contemporary Damon Runyon, Lardner (1885-1933) began his career as a sportswriter, and, as this collection attests, his journalistic background colors his keenly observed fiction. Gathered here are 32 short stories, a sketch performed in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies and some of Lardner's baseball reporting, including a generous selection on the notorious 1919 World Series. (One wonders at the subtitle's claim of inclusiveness, as Bruccoli's introduction claims that Lardner wrote 46 baseball stories.) Some of the entries are well known--``Alibi Ike,'' for example, and the Jack Keefe stories of You Know Me Al (1916)--while less familiar works include five more epistolary yarns featuring classic ``busher'' Keefe and his semiliterate braggadocio, and a similar series written in the '30s. Although a sameness of tone and focus makes extended reading of the volume tough going, most pieces hold up well individually. Lardner's bludgeon-like irony gives his writing an undeniable strength, and his turns of phrase pack a wallop. Who else would describe an umpire by writing that ``he was so homely that dogs wouldn't live in the same town''? Photos not seen by PW. (June)