The week after the Super Bowl is generally considered the worst time of the year for a sports columnist in Chicago.
The NBA is holding another All-Star Game on Sunday that no one really cares about, and with no Chicago Bulls players selected, it’s that much easier to ignore.
The NHL is on hiatus thanks to the Milan Cortina Winter Games, but Connor Bedard was snubbed for a spot on the Canadian team, making Finland’s Teuvo Teräväinen the only Blackhawks representative.
Cubs and White Sox pitchers and catchers are working out in Arizona at the start of spring training, but unless Sox general manager Chris Getz says something erroneous again, nothing much is expected to happen until the Cactus League schedule begins Friday.
Bears stadium search? Wake us up when there’s a deal.
There are a few interesting stories on the internet, such as ESPN shouter Stephen A. Smith’s latest threat to run for president in 2028, another sign that civilization is ending. But everyone knows politics and sports don’t mix on the sports page because it causes people’s heads to explode if they’re on the wrong side of history.
In lieu of any local angle or a national controversy to get outraged over, what’s a sports columnist to do to fill space on a lazy sports Sunday in the middle of February?
With nowhere else to turn, I checked out the Tribune archives to see what Ring Lardner would’ve done if he had nothing important to say.
Lardner was one of the original occupants of the “In the Wake of the News” column, which dates to 1907 and remains the longest-running sports column in America. He eventually became a world-renowned writer as a satirist and author of short stories but wrote the “Wake” column from 1913-1919, when the format was a little different. Back in Lardner’s days he’d sometimes include poems, quips from readers and items that often had nothing to do with sports.
Sometimes he wrote pure fiction. When Game 3 of the 1917 World Series between the White Sox and New York Giants was rained out, Lardner was in New York and wrote a fictional column pretending the game had actually been played. In the fictional game, a 9-3 Giants win, Lardner wrote that Sox third baseman Buck Weaver threw home during a nine-run first inning “thinking there was still a man left on third from yesterday’s game.” He noted that the New York reporters “rushed on the field and threw their arms around” Giants manager John McGraw after the first inning rally, adding: “He blushed painfully.”
That year would mark the last World Series championship for the Sox until 2005, and it was two years before the 1919 Black Sox scandal that Lardner also covered, which was depicted in the movie “Eight Men Out.” Director John Sayles played Lardner in the movie, which included a memorable scene of Lardner mocking Sox players on a train by singing “I’m forever blowing ballgames,” parodying the song “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”
While reading about that 1919 season, I discovered another gem Lardner wrote from a train on April 25, 1919, when the Sox were playing the Browns in St. Louis in the season-opening series. Lardner and Tribune baseball writer I.E. Sanborn were both covering the afternoon game — a 7-2 Browns win that played in 1 hour, 42 minutes at Sportsman’s Park.
Much like his classic “You Know Me Al” short stories, Lardner’s column was written in the form of a letter to a friend named Harvey. His writing style followed no rules and paid little attention to grammar or punctuation. Presumably the Tribune copy editors knew to let him go without corrections.
The column began with Lardner complaining to Harvey that the “H” on his typewriter was stuck, and by the time he got it unstuck he had forgotten what he was writing about.
“Well Harvey, I don’t suppose that makes much diff as I didn’t have any train of thought to start with and Mr. Sanborn is covering the baseball game if you could call it that and he knows what the score was which has got a whole lot on me because it was a question of either staying there and freezing to death or walking out on the ball game and I decided in favor of walking out for selfish reasons, though I suppose it would of been pro bono publico to set there and die.”
Lardner admitted he left with the Browns leading 6-2, adding: “I suppose they finally won because if they couldn’t win that game they couldn’t win any game.” He briefly mentioned Browns first baseman George Sisler “finally got himself a real hit” and Sox outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson “got himself a home run and a double.”
That was merely to let readers know he paid some attention, even though he was freezing and wanted to leave. He then continued.
“But as I say I walked out with Mr. Jackson’s hitting on my mind and I was thinking to myself, how dangerous it must be to play the outfield, or the infield against him as you are always liable to get murdered and I was going along on that train of thought till I got a taxi cab and come back to town, and by the time I was half way to town I was wondering which was more dangerous to ride in a St. Louis taxi can or play outfield or infield against Mr. Jackson, because you are bound to get killed sooner or later either way.”
Lardner then came to the decision that “the way to not ride in a St. Louis taxi cab is to get out of St. Louis,” so he told the cab driver to take him to a train station to buy a ticket on the Chicago and Eastern Illinois railroad.
“So I suppose I will get home one way or other, though it won’t be the only way,” he continued. “So I thought before I left I had better get some inside baseball so asked Mr. Gleason (White Sox manager Kid Gleason) whom was going to pitch tomorrow and he said, “Why, one of the St. Louis pitchers, I suppose.”
He signed off with: “Respy, Ring W. Lardner.”
No one did it better. More than a century ago, he taught us how to cover a baseball game without really covering a baseball game.
And the next time I’m freezing in the Wrigley Field press box and wondering whether to leave early, I’ll ask myself: “What would Ring do?”
The answer, my friend, is obvious.
