Ring Lardner 's place in literature as one of America's most important and influential short-story writers and humorists is secure. He was also a successful playwright, although his ambition was to be a songwriter. Lardner's original fame, however, came as a newspaperman. In the early part of the twentieth century he was one of the nation's best-known sportswriters.

In the era before the advent of radio and television--when newspapers and magazines were the country's main sources of information and entertainment-- Ring Lardner was a print media superstar. To advertise his syndicated coverage of the 1925 World Series, the Indianapolis Star ran a photo of Lardner under the heading, "No Need to Introduce This Guy." The ad promised readers "a barrel of laughs a day," and described Lardner as "baseball's poet laureate."

Others described Lardner as solemn, noble, and dignified; long-legged, lean, and consumptive; and enveloped in an odd, caustic...