The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring W. Lardner, 1914-1919

It is not surprising that baseball should have inspired a literary masterpiece: the baseball stories of Ring W. Lardner. This is an annotated and copiously illustrated edition of twenty-four short stories published between 1914 and 1919, including the six stories later collected as You Know Me Al. Two-thirds of the stories describe real teams, real players, and real events - which Lardner covered as a reporter. The extensive annotation establishes the stories’ relationship to the real world of early baseball. In the process, it illuminates the early culture of the major leagues, as well as the methods and sources of Lardner’s baseball fiction. It also identifies each actual person appearing in the stories, along with ball parks, theatres, individual games, slang, nicknames, and a host of other things. The book’s one hundred and eleven illustrations are mostly photographs of players, teams, ball parks, and other baseball memorabilia.