The John Lardner Reader: A Press Box Legend's Classic Sportswriting

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.

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