Happy Quasquicentennial, Ring Lardner!

[Overlay]

Born 125 years ago today (6 March 1885 - 25 September 1933). (I figured I'd beat falconridge to the punch on this one!)(It's not midnight yet in the Pacific time zone.) :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_Lardner

[Johnny V]

Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al is a personal favorite of mine and one of the best baseball books IMO. I also have a compilation of his comic strip by the same name. Good stuff.

[falconridge]

(I figured I'd beat falconridge to the punch on this one!)(It's not midnight yet in the Pacific time zone.) :)
So you have, Pal o' Mine!:cool:

Lardner's Jack Keefe on the high cost of living and the tribulations of keeping body and soul together on a Big League rookie's salary:


So here I am and it is costing me a dollar a day to stay at the hotel on Cottage Grove Avenue [about a mile east of Comiskey Park on Chicago's South Side; in 1912, when the first installment of "A Busher's Letters Home" appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, this area was still a middle-class neighborhood] and that don't include meals.


I generally eat at some of the cafes round the hotel but I had supper downtown last night and it cost me fifty-five cents. If Comiskey don't come back soon I won't have no more money left.

Speaking of money I won't sign no contract unless I get [...] three thousand dollars. You know what I was getting in Terre Haute, a hundred and fifty a month, and I know it's going to cost me a lot more to live here. [...] I can get board and room for eight dollars a week but I will be out of town half the time and will have to pay for my room when I am away or look up a new one when I come back. Then I will have to buy cloths to wear on the road in places like New York. When Comiskey comes back I will name him three thousand dollars as my lowest figure and I guess he will come through when he sees I am in ernest. I heard that Walsh [Hall of Fame hurler "Big Ed" Walsh, who from 1907 through 1912 averaged more than 25 wins per season for the Pale Hose] was getting twice as much as that.

[...] I am going to get a contract for three thousand and if he don't want to give it to me he can do the other thing. You know me Al [Keefe winds up signing for $1,800 for the season].


http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/25/66525-004-B44D82D6.jpg


THE MASTER AT WORK, CA. 1912