Ring Lardner on baseball outfield
The late Ring Lardner wrote some wonderful stories based on the characters he met when he had been a sports writer. His famous Alibi Ike was really modeled on a rather well-known outfielder. Lardner showed this player one of his Alibi Ike pieces and the next day the angry ballplayer came looking for the writer with murder in his eye.
"What's the idea?" he screamed. "You can't write about me like that! I got a good mind to go out and sue you for it!"
"Hey, wait a minute," protested Ring. "You can't do that. I didn't even mention your name in the story."
"Why do you suppose I'm sore?" growled the big-headed athlete. "Nobody knows it's me you wrote about!"
