You Know Me Al, Lardner's second book (the first had been a collection of occasional verse, Bib Ballads) is the best of the three volumes of Saturday Evening Post stories about the "busher" Jack Keefe, the self-involved, semi-literate, but not untalented pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. Each of the six stories in You Know Me Al, from "A Busher's Letters Home" to "The Busher Beats it Hence," consists entirely of Keefe's unintentionally revealing letters to his forbearing friend, Al Blanchard. They chronicle Jack's first two seasons in the major leagues (and, off season, his marriage and the birth of a son). Lardner achieves comic effects by exploiting Keefe's verbal incompetence, but he also uses the letters to develop a satiric commentary on the crudest type of know-nothing manhood, on baseball, and on marriage and parenthood in America.

Jack Keefe possesses the physical skills as a...