Editing Ring Lardner (section)

=== Books and stories ===
In 1916, Lardner published his first successful book, ''[[You Know Me Al]]'', an [[epistolary novel]] written in the form of letters by "Jack Keefe", a bush-league [[baseball]] player, to a friend back home.  The letters made much use of the fictional author's idiosyncratic [[vernacular]]. It had initially been published as six separate but interrelated [[short story|short stories]] in ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'', causing some to classify the book as a [[short story collection|collection of stories]], others as a [[novel]]. Like most of Lardner's stories, ''You Know Me Al'' employs [[satire]].

Journalist [[Andrew Ferguson (journalist)|Andrew Ferguson]] wrote that "Ring Lardner thought of himself as primarily a sports columnist whose stuff wasn't destined to last, and he held to that absurd belief even after his first masterpiece, ''You Know Me Al'', was published in 1916 and earned the awed appreciation of [[Virginia Woolf]], among other very serious, unfunny people." Ferguson termed the book one of the top five pieces of American humor writing.<ref>{{cite news | url= http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110009333| first= Andrew |last= Ferguson |title=Five Best: Laughter that Lasts|newspaper= [[The Wall Street Journal]]| date= 2 December 2006|page= P8|access-date= 3 December 2006| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070930195240/http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110009333| url-status= dead| archive-date= 30 September 2007}}</ref>

Sarah Bembrey has written about a singular event in Lardner's sportswriting experience: "In 1919 something happened that changed his way of reporting about sports and changed his love for baseball. This was the [[Black Sox scandal]] when the [[Chicago White Sox]] sold out the [[World Series]] to the [[Cincinnati Reds]]. Ring was exceptionally close to the White Sox and felt he was betrayed by the team. After the scandal, Ring always wrote about sports as if there were some kink to the outcome."<ref name="The Lardner Dynasty - Ring" /> Lardner's last fictional baseball writing was collected in the book ''Lose with a Smile'' (1933).

Lardner later published such stories as "[[Haircut (short story)|Haircut]]", "Some Like Them Cold", "The Golden Honeymoon", "[[Alibi Ike]]", and "A Day with Conrad Green". He also continued to write follow-up stories to ''You Know Me Al'', with the protagonist of that book, the headstrong, egotistical but gullible Jack Keefe, experiencing various ups and downs in his major league career and in his personal life. Private Keefe's [[World War I]] training camp letters home to his friend Al were collected in the book ''Treat 'Em Rough: Letters From Jack the Kaiser Killer''. The sequel, ''The Real Dope'', followed Keefe overseas to the trenches in France.  He then returned home to pitch for the 1919 Chicago White Sox, but the sequence of stories closed with Keefe being traded to the Philadelphia A's before the 1919 World Series -- Jack Keefe, whatever his flaws, would not be involved in the Black Sox scandal.  Lardner returned to the character when he wrote the continuity for a daily ''You Know Me Al'' comic strip that ran from 1922 to 1925.