This collection marks the return to print of John Lardner, one of America's press box giants, a classic stylist whose wry humor and tireless reporting helped elevate sportswriting to art. The brilliant W. C. Heinz called Lardner "the best of us." This book shows why. Lardner applied his singular touch not only to his era's icons-Joe Louis, Ted Williams, Satchel Paige-but to the scamps, eccentrics, hustlers, and con men in the shadow of sports. Whether in snappy columns or leisurely magazine pieces, Lardner held sport of every description up to the light, forever changing the way people wrote, read, and thought about their heroes, from superstars to scrappers. These forty-nine pieces represent sportswriting at the top of its game.
Purchase the audio edition.
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Dan Jenkins
Acknowledgments
Introduction by John Schulian
Part 1. In a Class by Themselves
Down Great Purple Valleys
"The Haig": Rowdy Rebel of the Fairways
Part 2. Bats and Brawls
Babe Herman
Good-by to All That
Memoirs of Old Satch
Most Blood for Your Money
The Home of the Bean and the Kid
The World's Richest Problem Child
Hard-way Bill on the Mississippi
They Walked by Night
Baseball Eye
Passing of an Unlicensed Hero
The All-American Rookie
Ball Fans and Other Primates
Memoirs of a Mild Fanatic
Razor Blades Amok
The Space Revolution
Part 3. Cauliflower Alley
Morgan on Jaws
Bag Hits Baer
The Boy Bandit
Upsy Downsy
Death of a Simian and a Scholar
The Case of the Chilly Giant
Mr. Percentage
Life with Eddie
The Sweet and the Tough
John Arthur Johnson
Fun at the Scales
Now Pitching for Bartlett's
When in Doubt, Hang the Judge
No Scar, No Memory
Part 4. Cautionary Tales
The Life and Loves of the Real McCoy
Mysterious Montague
Battling Siki
Part 5. Other Precincts
The Roller Derby
Sleeper for 44
The Old Postgraduate Try
Rooney's Ride
An Angel on Horseback
Little Bill
Strong Cigars and Lovely Women
What Was That Again?
Mr. Jacoby and the National Folly
The Best of the Browsers
Maybe in Memoriam
The Life of T-ts Sh-r
What Price Olympic Peace?
Part 6. Two for the Money
Titanic Thompson
The Sack of Shelby
About the Author :
John Lardner (1913–60), the son of legendary humorist Ring Lardner, was a columnist for Newsweek; a frequent and much-honored contributor to the New Yorker, True, and Sport; and the author of It Beats Working, Strong Cigars and Lovely Women, and White Hopes and Other Tigers. John Schulian's work has been included in Best American Sports Writing and Sports Illustrated's Fifty Years of Great Writing. His Twilight of the Long-ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball is available in a Bison Books edition. Dan Jenkins is the author of Jenkins at the Majors: 60 Years of the World's Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger.
Review :
"Shut down all the sports-writing classes and seminars and workshops and hand out this book instead. Lardner is all you need." Rick Reilly, ESPN the Magazine columnist, author of Hate Mail from Cheerleaders "Reading Lardner late at night in a comfortable chair is (as Walt Kelly once said of the man himself) to enjoy solitude in the best of company." Pete Hamill, legendary New York columnist and author of North River" "Quite simply, the best sports columnist I have read." Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer "John really was funny, but not like his old man. He wasn't funny like anybody else. He was funny like John Lardner, a bona fide original." Red Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist
