{"id":97620,"date":"2025-03-16T23:36:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T03:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=97620"},"modified":"2025-03-16T23:38:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T03:38:19","slug":"baseball-book-review-frank-chance-diamond-ring-lardner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/16\/baseball-book-review-frank-chance-diamond-ring-lardner\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Frank Chance’s Diamond, the Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The name Ring Lardner should come up not only in a discussion of great baseball writers, but great writers, period. The proof lies in a collection published last year, Frank Chance<\/a>\u2019s Diamond<\/em>, subtitled The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner<\/em>, edited by Ron Rapoport. The proper bibliography format dictates that I also provide the publishing company and date and place of publication, but nobody gives a damn about any of that.<\/p>\n

\"May<\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Joe Landolina<\/em><\/p>\n

Reviewing Frank Chance\u2019s<\/em> Diamond, The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner<\/em><\/h2>\n

In 1905, the 20-year-old Lardner, after quitting several jobs, scammed his way into a job as a reporter despite having no previous writing experience (sort of how I got this job). By 1908, he had written his first article on major league baseball. Eventually, he was covering baseball for the Chicago Tribune<\/em>. It was there he spent the rest of his career but for a brief intervening stint with the Boston American<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lardner\u2019s baseball reporting was unique in that he wrote in the vernacular, with a sharp sense of humor. This included misspelled words and mangled use of the language, all of it intentionally. Thus, for example, \u201corganized baseball\u201d becomes \u201cagonized baseball.\u201d The pitching corps becomes the \u201cpitching corpse.\u201d Outfielder Whitey Witt<\/a> is a \u201cpillow of strength\u201d defensively. Thanks to the Bell Syndicate, newspapers all over the country carried his reporting on the \u201cWorld Serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, or missing apostrophes found in a quoted text hereinafter are in the original. (Editor: Please leave that stuff as is.)<\/p>\n

Lardner on Baseball was Gonzo Before Hunter<\/h3>\n

Inserting himself into his stories, Lardner practiced Gonzo Journalism long before Hunter S. Thompson and before anybody called it that. In his tales, Lardner played a character named Ring Lardner, much like Jerry Seinfeld<\/a> played a character named Jerry Seinfeld in the hit TV show Seinfeld<\/em>. Another reporter once advised Lardner to stop using \u201cI\u201d in his stories and use \u201cthis reporter\u201d or \u201cyour correspondent\u201d instead. Those phrases are then sprinkled liberally throughout his next article to humorous effect.<\/p>\n

Lardner was so famous in his day that he was once invited to play golf with President Warren G. Harding. Yet today, his literary genius is forgotten. It could be because the hard-drinking Lardner preferred the company of baseball players to literary snobs. An exception was his friendship with drinking buddy F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/a>. (The book\u2019s title comes from a line in a tribute to Lardner written by Fitzgerald.) It may also be because he rejected numerous offers to write a novel.<\/p>\n

You Know Me, Al<\/h3>\n

Lardner did, however, write short stories for magazines and newspapers, not always about baseball. One series of short stories, A Busher\u2019s Letters Home<\/em>, would be published as his only novel, You Know Me, Al<\/em>. Writing anything about Lardner without including a mini-review of You Know Me, Al<\/em> is difficult. In my opinion, it\u2019s the best and funniest work of fiction ever written about baseball or anything else.<\/p>\n

You Know Me, Al<\/em> was first published in 1916. It follows the story of fictional Chicago White Sox pitcher Jack Keefe via his letters to his best friend Al. Keefe is stupid, vain, cheap, selfish, and stubborn. He’s nearly as good a pitcher as he believes. He\u2019s quick to blame others for his failures. But he\u2019s also easily taken advantage of and blithely unaware when he\u2019s being ridiculed. Thus, he\u2019s a sympathetic figure as well.<\/p>\n

No Soft Spot<\/h3>\n

So, when Keefe loses 16-2 to Ty Cobb<\/a> and the Detroit Tigers, he blames his manager for leaving him in the game with a sore arm, poor effort by his teammates, bad field conditions, and the wind. Playing poker with his teammates, he\u2019s laughed at when he calls with four sevens in his hand. (This was based on a real-life incident witnessed by Lardner where Cubs pitcher Rube Kroh<\/a> called with four kings.) Keefe eventually marries, and his wife gives birth to a baby boy. Sox coach Kid Gleason<\/a> visits the Keefe home and picks up the baby. As Keefe writes to Al:<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he starts patting the baby\u2019s head and I says Here, don\u2019t do that because he has got a soft spot in his head and you might hit it. He says I thought this was your baby and I says Well he is my baby and he says Well then they can\u2019t be no soft spot in his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now on to the Book I\u2019m Supposed to be Reviewing<\/h3>\n

Frank Chance’s Diamond<\/em> is divided into sections, the best of which is \u201cThe World Serious,\u201d which is also the longest. The stories are more than 100 years old, but fortunately, there are helpful explanatory footnotes from Rapoport, who, like Lardner, worked in Chicago. (Rapoport also wrote Let\u2019s Play Two<\/em>, a definitive, warts-and-all biography of Ernie Banks<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nowhere Lardner wouldn\u2019t go in these stories. Of one young White Sox player, Lardner wrote, \u201che and a bath tub are only casual acquaintances.\u201d Frequently, he wrote a game story in rhyme. His report on Game 6 of the 1917 World Series<\/a> was written in broken French under the headline \u201cThe Modern Voltaire.\u201d Lardner knew his literature as well as his baseball.<\/p>\n

Providing inning-by-inning coverage of Game 5 of the 1916 \u201cSerious,\u201d for the fifth inning he wrote, \u201cI was out getting a sandwich.\u201d Covering the annual City Series between the two Chicago teams in 1918, he described pitcher Lefty Tyler<\/a>\u2019s control problems by writing, \u201che hadn\u2019t no idear where they kept home plate, though it was right in plain sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Serious<\/h3>\n

On to the 1919 \u201cWorld Serious\u201d and Game 1, where the Cincinnati Reds’ Jake Daubert<\/a> was hit in the head by a pitch and lay prone until he finally got up and took first base. Lardner described it as a calculated but failed strategy on the part of the White Sox to kill each Red. Besides being the backdrop for the Black Sox Scandal<\/a>, it was the first Series to go to a best-of-nine format. (That idea was abandoned after the 1921 Series.) Asked who gets the advantage from a nine-game Series, Lardner wrote, \u201cWell gents all as I can say is it isnt the newspaper men.\u201d Slyly referencing the Scandal in his story on the 1920 Series, Lardner says \u201cthe winners share of the players in this serious wont be as much as some of the losers got in 1919.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon, Lardner\u2019s personal problems took precedence over the games, and his name even often appeared in the headlines. Maybe it\u2019s because he lost interest in the game. That\u2019s explained toward the end of the book in his 1921 article, \u201cWhy Ring Stopped Covering Baseball.\u201d Turns out Lardner wasn\u2019t a fan of Babe Ruth<\/a> and the brand of baseball he wrought.<\/p>\n

Thus, Lardner began to openly and humorously complain in his articles about having to be at the ballpark. The 1922 World Series took a back seat to a story about Ring\u2019s wife wanting a fur coat. He wrote of a Pittsburgh hotel losing his shirt when he was there for the 1925 Series. When he returned for the 1927 Series, the last one he covered in person, the lost shirt is mentioned again.<\/p>\n

A Brilliant Writer<\/h3>\n

Lest the reader think Lardner was a clown masquerading as a writer, I direct you to his story about the end of the 1912 World Series<\/a>, \u201cThe Tears of Christy Mathewson<\/a>.\u201d The poignant opening paragraphs describing the aftermath of a tough loss endured by Mathewson, a Lardner favorite, are brilliantly written and stand with anything ever written about a baseball game.<\/p>\n

The Baseball Writing Style of Lardner<\/h3>\n

Lardner\u2019s style of writing wouldn\u2019t fly today. His intentional spelling and grammatical errors wouldn\u2019t even pass the readability test in the program we use here at Last Word On Sports. Another reason, and a sadder one, is that we take our sports too seriously these days. Lardner wrote during a time when fans didn\u2019t spend every waking moment worrying about why their teams weren\u2019t better.<\/p>\n

Today, therefore, we\u2019re not in the mood for his brand of humor in sports reporting. Social media, talk radio, and cable TV are competing for our attention 24 hours a day. They do this by feeding us topics designed to keep us anxious, angry, and miserable, ensuring that we\u2019ll be back for more. Thus, we\u2019re made to believe, inter alia<\/em>, that if our teams stink, we must be getting screwed over. This phenomenon is called the \u201cattention economy,\u201d as described in another fine book, How to Do Nothing<\/em> by Jenny Odell. My wife says I didn\u2019t need to read a book by that title, as I could write one myself. In any event, I recommend it.<\/p>\n

The Last Word<\/h3>\n

In conclusion, the writings of Lardner are essential for any baseball fan. I\u2019d call Frank Chance\u2019s Diamond<\/em> a \u201cgood read\u201d except that I hate when verbs are used as nouns. Whatever one wants to call it, there are plenty of hard belly laughs along the way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: \u00a9 Matt Stone\/Courier Journal \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The name Ring Lardner should come up not only in a discussion of great baseball writers, but great writers, period. The proof lies in a collection published last year, Frank Chance\u2019s Diamond, subtitled The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner, edited by Ron Rapoport. The proper bibliography format dictates that I also provide the publishing company […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5010,"featured_media":97654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,4454],"tags":[1231,4547,1760],"class_list":["post-97620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-baseball-history","tag-babe-ruth","tag-chicago-black-sox","tag-ty-cobb"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97620"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97653,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97620\/revisions\/97653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}