First great success of Ring Lardner was ""You Know Me Al"", a fictional series of letters
from a popular baseball hero to his friend, slowly revealing the hero as a
semiliterate, crude, conceited, self-deceiving boob. This work was created while
Lardner was writing a sports column for The Chicago Tribune, first appeared in
The Saturday Evening Post. It was later published in the book form in 1916.
You Know Me Al shows Lardner as a satirical master: a fine and misanthropic storyteller
with a excellent feel for the niceties of characters and speech.