From Publishers Weekly
Like his contemporary Damon Runyon, Lardner (1885-1933) began his career as a sportswriter, and, as this collection attests, his journalistic background colors his keenly observed fiction. Gathered here are 32 short stories, a sketch performed in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies and some of Lardner's baseball reporting, including a generous selection on the notorious 1919 World Series. (One wonders at the subtitle's claim of inclusiveness, as Bruccoli's introduction claims that Lardner wrote 46 baseball stories.) Some of the entries are well known--"Alibi Ike," for example, and the Jack Keefe stories of You Know Me Al (1916)--while less familiar works include five more epistolary yarns featuring classic "busher" Keefe and his semiliterate braggadocio, and a similar series written in the '30s. Although a sameness of tone and focus makes extended reading of the volume tough going, most pieces hold up well individually. Lardner's bludgeon-like irony gives his writing an undeniable strength, and his turns of phrase pack a wallop. Who else would describe an umpire by writing that "he was so homely that dogs wouldn't live in the same town"? Photos not seen by PW. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Lardner was the first great American writer to see the diverse possibilities of baseball as a subject. Indeed, as Bruccoli writes in his introduction, "Lardner's 130 short stories, 46 of which are baseball stories, show a remarkable range." This volume collects all those diamond-related tales, including the famous Jack Keefe epistolary stories that made up the well-known volume You Know Me Al (1914), plus some prime journalistic pieces containing such eternally true statements as, "Baseball is a business, a mighty big one." They all display the writer's excellence in capturing the idiom and nuances of baseball talk. Recommended, despite some overlap with previous Lardner story collections.- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


USA Today
"Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner is the baseball literary event of the year."


Booklist
"...this collection provides the opportunity for a new generation of baseball aficionados to come home to Lardner’s wonderful stories."


People
"Read Lardner’s baseball tales, and you’ll be thrown into a world where... the game truly becomes a metaphor for life."


St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"As a baseball writer, Ring Lardner still stands alone."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

More Than any other writer in the twentieth century, Ring Lardner was identified with baseball. His years as a newspaper reporter in Chicago covering the Cubs and White Sox gave him inside knowledge of the sport and how it reflected the American experience. Lardner's baseball short stories remain the core of his career and the basis of his enduring reputation. With his unerring eye for detail and his sense of the absurd, Lardner ranged over the entire game. He probed not only the nature of the game but also the lives of the men who played it. His famous portraits, such as those in "Alibi Ike" and "My Roomy," express his complex responses to baseball and the people associated with it. Historically accurate and richly textured, Ring Around the Bases reveals the master at the height of his craft and celebrates the American pastime. The collection is the ultimate lineup in baseball fiction. Ring Around the Bases was originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1992 in cloth. This new paperback edition includes an additional uncollected short story. Located after the publication of the cloth edition, "The Courtship of T. Dorgan" truly makes this volume of thirty-four stories the complete Lardner baseball collection.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Like his contemporary Damon Runyon, Lardner (1885-1933) began his career as a sportswriter, and, as this collection attests, his journalistic background colors his keenly observed fiction. Gathered here are 32 short stories, a sketch performed in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies and some of Lardner's baseball reporting, including a generous selection on the notorious 1919 World Series. (One wonders at the subtitle's claim of inclusiveness, as Bruccoli's introduction claims that Lardner wrote 46 baseball stories.) Some of the entries are well known--``Alibi Ike,'' for example, and the Jack Keefe stories of You Know Me Al (1916)--while less familiar works include five more epistolary yarns featuring classic ``busher'' Keefe and his semiliterate braggadocio, and a similar series written in the '30s. Although a sameness of tone and focus makes extended reading of the volume tough going, most pieces hold up well individually. Lardner's bludgeon-like irony gives his writing an undeniable strength, and his turns of phrase pack a wallop. Who else would describe an umpire by writing that ``he was so homely that dogs wouldn't live in the same town''? Photos not seen by PW. (June)

Library Journal