Ring moved in the company of a few dozen illiterates

playing a boy's game ... However deeply Ring might cut

into it, his cake had the diameter of Frank Chance's di-
amond."
As Adam Gopnik wrote in a recent issue of The New
Yorker, Lardner's contemporary Damon Runyon "knew
that these two things were true: the contests were epic in
the enjoyment they provided, and they were miniature
in their importance." Lardner also understood that his
readers took his work more seriously when he took the
games themselves less seriously.
Like many of his press box contemporaries, Lardner
peppered his game accounts and columns with light
verse. Unlike them, he occasionally wrote entire stories
in rhyme. His account of travelling to Boston during the
1916 Red Sox-Robins World Series begins: "I thought
FRANK CHANCE'S DIAMOND: that this was just the time to write my story all in rhyme.
I rose this morn at half past 8 and wondered how it got
THE BASEBALL JOURNALISM
so late. I shaved and dressed and packed my grip and got
OF RING LARDNER all ready for the trip and went downstairs and paid my
by Ron Rapoport, editor bill and said, 'I'm from Chicago, ILL.'" A 1914 article on
2024, Lyons Press "Cubist Baseball" had Lardner writing about infielder
[ISBN: 978-1493080991. 347 pp. Rollie Zeider of the Chifeds in the manner of Gertrude
$24.95 USD. Softcover] Stein: "A hook a hook a hook a Hoosier hook a prom-
inent proboscis a promontory a preeminence a peninsu-
reviewed by Andrew Milner
la. But a good guy a funny fella a perfect poker player a
☛ [email protected]
bear base runner a hook slide. A hook."
A century after his heyday, Ring Lardner is still world-
Though the chronicler of fictional also-rans, Lardner
renowned for his matchless baseball-related short stories.
saved some of his best baseball reporting for the game's
His “You Know Me, Al” stories set the template for the
all-time greats. He wrote in his account of the aftermath
myth of the naïve, cocky bush leaguer called up to The
of the 1912 Red Sox-Giants World Series, "While the
Big Show, and his "Alibi Ike" is an anthology standby.
thousands, made temporarily crazy by a triumph unex-
What's less appreciated during the 2000s is the skill
pected, yelled, stamped their feet, smashed hats and
present in his daily baseball coverage, on deadlines usu-
hugged each other, there was seen one of the saddest
ally more severe than those of The Saturday Evening Post.
spectacles in the history of a sports that is a strange and
Ron Rapoport corrects this oversight in Frank Chance's wonderful mixture of joy and gloom. It was the specta-
Diamond, his new collection of Lardner's newspaper cle of an old man, as baseball players are called, on the
baseball reporting (taken from Rapoport’s 2017 anthol- New York players' bench with bowed head and drooping
ogy The Lost Journalism of Ring Lardner). Rapoport notes shoulders, with the tears streaming from his eyes, a man
how Lardner's literary contemporaries admired his skills on whom his team's fortune had been staked and lost
but wanted him to concentrate on more substantial sub- and a many who would have proven his clear title to
jects. He takes his book's title from F. Scott Fitzgerald's trust reposed in him if his mates had stood by him in
dismissive comment: "(W)hen most men of promise the supreme test. The man was Christy Mathewson."
achieve an adult education, if only in the school of war,

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Three years later, Lardner would write about "Matty" in
the "You Know Me, Al" vernacular: "You're just bustin'
in, kid, and I don't know if you're there or not. But if
you don't want to be huntin' a job as a floorwalker or
night watchman somewhere in a few years, the best
thing you can do is find out all the bad habits Matty's
got and then get 'em yourself."
Rapoport, a former columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times
and Los Angeles Daily News, also helps lay to rest the
common belief that Lardner’s interest in baseball ebbed
because of the fallout from the 1919 World Series. He
appeared to have been more disillusioned by Babe Ruth
and the introduction of the lively ball. In a 1930 piece
for The New Yorker, Lardner wrote, “In the year 1911 I
think it was (Frank) Schulte led the National league in
homers with a total of twenty-one. Such a number
would (be) disgraceful in these days when a pitcher gets DEADBALL AT SABR 52
almost as many.” The Deadball Era Committee will hold its annual meet-
Through this smart collection of regular-season and ing during SABR 52 at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis,
World Series game accounts in prose and poetry, August 7-11 2024. Committee chair John McMurray
Rapoport confirms that if Lardner's cake was merely the will host the one-hour get-together. A/V availabilities
size of a baseball diamond, it was in fact a diamond as and time slots have not yet been confirmed.
big as the Ritz. A highlight of the meeting will be the formal presenta-
Andrew Milner joined SABR in 1984 and has written for tion of the Larry Ritter award to Jim Chapman, author
the recent SABR books on Shibe Park, Yankee Stadium and of Baseball Photography of the Deadball Era. (See accom-
Ebbets Field. He lives in the Philadelphia area. panying article). Elsewhere on the convention agenda
are three presentations bound to be of interest to
Deadballers: Dan Levitt’s, “John McGraw’s Florida
The third contract toward the equipment of Ebbets Land Investment Fiasco;” “Smokers and Saints: The
Field, the new home of the Superbas, was awarded Florida State League and Tampa Bay’s Long Forgotten
yesterday to the Heywood Bros. & Wakefield Compa- First Professional Baseball Teams, 1919-1926” by Mark
ny for almost twenty thousand folding opera and box Panuthos; and ” Mike Donlin, 1907: Will He or Won’t
seat chairs for the grandstand. He?,” by Steve Steinberg.
The chairs for the main body of the stand will have Elsewhere, Hall of Famers Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, Bert
only one arm at each end of a row, all intermediate Blyleven, and Jim Kaat will appear and celebrate the
chairs being armless. The seats will be 13 by 17 inches,
Minnesota Twins heritage. Optional events include a
the standards of steel with curved backs of wood.
These chairs have been specially designed by Charles St. Paul Saints game, a tour of Target Field, and a
H. Ebbets, and are expected to be far more roomy and Twins-Guardians game.
comfortable than the old steel chair, the elimination
of the arms practically meaning an increased space for
patrons of two inches a chair. A row of these chairs
will be installed in the grandstand at Washington Park
prior to the opening day on April 11. Gene Ahern,
Milwaukee Journal,
New York Tribune, March 24, 1912 November 25, 1918

PAGE 33 - THE INSIDE GAME — VOL. XXIV, NO. 2