Frank Chance's Diamond
The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner
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"This is a comprehensive volume capturing the Lardner style and offering a considerable insight into America's favorite sportswriter... Ron Rapoport has done a superb job in his selection" --The New York Journal of Books
"Frank Chance's Diamond is a time machine. . .Lardner's writing reveals its exuberance and innocence, and exposes its prejudices, all while highlighting the joys of the era's baseball." --Epoch Times
At one time Ring Lardner's baseball articles reached millions of readers through more than one hundred newspapers throughout America. Admirers of his writing included F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Virginia Woolf. He was as familiar to Americans in the 1920s as Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Henry Ford, and Babe Ruth. His articles about the players he knew, his World Series coverage, his poems, parodies, and jokes were unlike any other baseball reporting ever written, both in his time and since.
Even a hundred years later, Lardner's baseball journalism makes for delightful, often wildly funny, reading and offers a glimpse of where his ground-breaking baseball fiction came from. This book contains Lardner's columns about Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel, and Three-Finger Mordecai Brown and some fabulous lesser-known characters like Frank Schulte, Heine Zimmerman, Jim Schekard, Johnny Kling, Rollie Zeider, and Peaches Graham, as well as examples of Lardner's coverage of the World Series--including the notorious 1919 Black Sox Series. Ron Rapoport's introduction puts Lardner in his time and place and explains how his writing about baseball developed over the years.
About this Author
Ron Rapoport is a sportswriter and author who lives in Santa Monica, California. He was a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Los Angeles Daily News and was sports commentator for National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition Saturday" for two decades. He also wrote about sports for the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press in New York and San Francisco. He is the recipient of the Ring Lardner Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism and has written numerous books about sports and show business. His latest book, published in 2019 by Hachette Books, is Let's Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, The Life of Ernie Banks.
Reviews
"Frank Chance's Diamond is an ode to old-time baseball. It's the purest form of a love letter by Lardner to America's game, from the regular season to the World Series. The sights, smells, and sounds of the ballpark come to life, and the personalities of players and managers are on full display, warts and all."
"This book gives us ample examples of [Ring Lardner's] style... Rapoport has done a great service to anybody who loves words."
"Frank Chance's Diamond puts Ring Lardner in the proper context. It offers great insight into one of America's eminent sportswriters."
"This is a comprehensive volume capturing the Lardner style and offering a considerable insight into America's favorite sportswriter... Ron Rapoport has done a superb job in his selection of columns and his editing and footnoting."
Rapoport, a 20-year veteran sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, delivers what is sure to be the definitive biography of Chicago Cubs baseball player Ernie Banks...This marvelous look at the life of a beloved athlete should be essential reading for baseball fan.
One of the better sports biographies of the century.
Ron Rapoport has done a magnificent job lifting the veil and illuminating the shadows in Let's Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks....Rapoport goes at his subject with a reporter's eye, filling Let's Play Two with details that should be a revelation to many, though some will merely jog the memories of older die-hard Cubs fans.
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