You Know Me Al: A
Busher’s Letters – Ring Lardner
This classic of American humor features our old pal, the
unreliable narrator. Each chapter is a bundle of letters to the hometown friend
Al, written by Jack Keefe, a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the years
just before the US entry into World War I.
FRIEND AL: Coming out of
Amarillo last night I and Lord and Weaver was sitting at a table in the dining
car with a old lady. None of us was talking to her but she looked me over
pretty careful and seemed to kind of like my looks. Finally she says Are you
boys with some football club? Lord nor Weaver didn't say nothing so I thought
it was up to me and I says No mam this is the Chicago White Sox Ball Club. She
says I knew you were athaletes. I says Yes I guess you could spot us for
athaletes. She says Yes indeed and specially you. You certainly look healthy. I
says You ought to see me stripped. I didn't see nothing funny about that but I
thought Lord and Weaver would die laughing. Lord had to get up and leave the
table and he told everybody what I said.
No, Jack, clueless as he is, wouldn’t see anything funny
about that. He has skill as pitcher but is too lazy and arrogant to practice
and learn. A shameless braggart, he inflates his accomplishments. He is the
worst teammate in the world.
This should ought to of gave me
a record of 16 wins and 0 defeats because the only games I lost was throwed
away behind me but instead of that my record is 10 games win and 6 defeats and
that don't include the games I finished up and helped the other boys win which
is about 6 more alltogether but what do I care about my record Al? because I am
not the kind of man that is allways thinking about there record and playing for
there record while I am satisfied if I give the club the best I got and if I
win all O.K. And if I lose who's fault is it. Not mine Al.
Jack has a pathetic need for admiration. So susceptible
to flattery, he is easily suckered by owners, managers, and husband hunters who
all soft-soap him in order to manipulate him. He is hypersensitive to criticism
and envious to the bone. He uses chicanery, exploits others’ emotions and weaknesses, walks
away from debts like a skinflint, and lacks any sense of business or ethics. Don’t
forget gullible, as managers try to persuade him to go on a round the world
exhibition trip.
While we was still in that there
Medford yesterday Mcgraw and Callahan come up to me and says was they not no
chance of me changeing my mind a bout makeing the hole trip. I says No they was
not. Then Callahan says Well I dont know what we are going to do then and I says
Why and he says Comiskey just got a letter from president Wilson the President
of the united states and in the letter president Wilson says he had got an
other letter from the king of Japan who says that they would not stand for the
White Sox and giants comeing to Japan un less they brought all there stars a
long and president Wilson says they would have to take there stars a long
because he was a scared if they did not take there stars a long Japan would get
mad at the united states and start a war and then where would we be at. So
Comiskey wired a telegram to president Wilson and says Mathewson could not make
the trip because he was so old but would everything be all O.K. if I was to go
a long and president Wilson wired a telegram back and says Yes he had been
talking to the priest from Japan and he says Yes it would be all O.K.
Indeed, Jack’s lack of character and competence reminds
us post-moderns of somebody and our own wacky reality. The consummate American
con-artist’s first mark is always his own self.
My vague impression is that the writer had more sympathy for team owners
than players. So Lardner was inclined to paint baseball players in less than heroic
colors and thus indirectly caution us fans from idolizing lugs and lummoxes,
the ancestors of guys who take gas
station boner pills.
Moral advice aside, the stories are very funny but we
should read them spaced out over weeks just like the first readers read them as
they were serialized in the Saturday
Evening Post during the Golden Age of Weekly Magazine Fiction. As a classic
epistolary story and American colloquial speech, this book can be found at Gutenberg and Libravox.
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