The John Lardner Reader: A Press Box Legend's Classic Sportswriting
If this collection of 49 sports pieces is a true measure of John Lardner’s talent, it’s almost scandalous that the work of Ring’s oldest son has not appeared in book form for some 50 years. Not only was Lardner considered one of the great sportswriters of the late 1940s and 1950s, but these pieces—culled mostly from Newsweek, Sport, True, and the New Yorker—are as fresh and crisp as this morning’s paper. Lardner was completely at home in the worlds of baseball and boxing, here offering up thumbnail, dead-on profiles of Ted Williams, Casey Stengel, Jack Johnson, Babe Herman, and many others. But he has also ventured beyond, with a sharp piece here on the late, great restaurateur Toots Shor and a full-blooded profile of golf legend Walter Hagen, whose name had, for all these years, only been synonymous with golf equipment. One quibble: dating the pieces would have helped. Still, a collection well worth the wait. --Alan Moores