Ring Lardner (6 March, 1885-25 September, 1933) was an American short story writer and sports columnist.
Fun Facts about Ring Lardner:
1. Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was born in Niles, MI to Henry and Lena Phillips Lardner, as the youngest of nine siblings.
2. He was named after his cousin, who was named by Ring Lardner’s uncle, Read Admiral James L. Lardner, who named his son after his close friend, Rear Admiral Cadwalader Ringgold. He never liked his name and preferred Ring, but he named his son Ringgold Jr.
3. Mr. Lardner loved baseball, he understood the game and the players. He started writing in South Bend, IL in 1905, and found himself in Chicago by 1907. By 1909 he was writing a humorous baseball column, Pullman Pastimes for The Sporting News.
4. His biographer, Donald Elder, (check out the biography)called him the “most ferocious satirist since (Jonathan) Swift“.
5. The Chicago Tribune, which welcomed him back in 1913, became his home newspaper. His column In the Wake of the News was syndicated to 100 newspapers and, in fact, is still published by the Tribune.
6. The year 1916 saw the publication of You Knew Me Al, his most successful book about a bush-league baseball player writing letters to a friend back home. Originally the book was published in six installments of interrelated stories in The Saturday Evening Post.
7. Mr. Lardner also wrote plays, he had some success on Broadway with Elner, the Great, which he wrote with George M. Cohan, and June Moon co-written with George S. Kaufman.
8. During a time of whimsical retrospection Ring Lardner wrote that he had three great ambitions: as a young men to watch enough baseball, as a man to have his stories printed in magazines, and later on to have one of his plays produces.
His ambitions became reality before his untimely death.
9. Ring was very popular and had many friends of note. Including F. Scott Fitzgerald (who modeled a character in Tender is the Night after him), W. C. Fields, Virginia Woolf, Rube Goldberg and even golfed with President Harding.
10. After playing bridge with his family and friends, Ring Lardner suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma. He never regained consciousnesses and died that evening surrounded by his wife and two sons.
Zohar — Man of la Book
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Sources:
Ring Lardner | Wikipedia
Ring Lardner | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Satirist & Humorist | Britannica
Ring Lardner | Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame
