You know Me Al

Subtitled, A Busher’s Letters, this 1916 epistolary novel chronicles the adventures of Jack Keefe, a marginal pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. Keefe is by turn a braggart, liar, and naif while displaying arrogance and ignorance in equal measure as he relates what life is like in the big leagues to his friend, Al in Bedford, Indiana. The humor starts out raucous but gets pretty dark by the end. Lardner kept writing Keefe short stories and in subsequent collections took him to Europe as a reluctant draftee in WWI and then back to the major leagues as a member of the infamous Black Sox.