Baseball books are divided into several subgenres: team histories, overall histories, biographies, statistical analyses, etc. Each year offers one from each group that stands apart from the rest. As the 2006 Major League season dwindles down to a precious few days of postseason play, the following titles will help keep fans warm until spring training gets underway in 2007.

Veteran columnist George Vecsey offers a quick recap of historical highlights of the national pastime in BASEBALL: A HISTORY OF AMERICA'S FAVORITE GAME. The slim volume --- a mere 250-plus pages --- barely touches on his subjects, but gives readers a starting point from which they can delve further.

With more than 40 years on the baseball beat, Vecsey is a voice of authority who never assumes his audience is as expert as he nor does he condescend, explaining the obvious. Among the topics he offers at watershed moments in the game are the questionable origins of the sport; how Babe Ruth rescued baseball in the wake of the 1919 "Black Sox" gambling scandal; and Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson and the Negro Leagues, among others. In his chapter "Radio Days," Vecsey reports how technology --- radio, followed by television and then the Internet --- has transformed the way fans take in games. Other entries note the evolution of the sport through various changes to rules and equipment. Finally, he opines on relatively recent events that have damaged the lofty image of baseball as "America's game," including the cocaine scandals of the 1980s, collusion by owners to keep salaries as low as possible as free agency mushroomed in the mid-1970s, Pete Rose and his gambling problems, and, most recently, the shadow of steroids.

Vecsey, a writer for The New York Times since 1968 (and Newsday for eight years prior to that), is at his best when he writes from a personal perspective. The prologue considers sharing his love for baseball with his grandson, for example, and other comments (far too few) serve as an example of how this game can take a hold of someone as a youngster and never let go.

It almost seems unfair when a publishing institution can just reach into its archives to put together a visually stunning and narratively pleasing volume such as SPORTS ILLUSTRATED: THE BASEBALL BOOK.

In addition to the marvelous photos, this hefty coffee table edition assembles some of the finest writers from within and without the magazine's pages. There's Robert Creamer's paean to venerable broadcaster Vin Scully; Roger Kahn's essay on the end of Stan Musial's career; and Frank Deford ruminating on Christy Mathewson and John McGraw, Billy Martin and Bob Feller.

Ostensibly divided into decades, SI offers their considered opinion on all things baseball, such as all-decade teams, debuts, finales, statistical leaders and a section they like to call "Hot Tickets: 10 Games You Wish You'd Seen." They also weigh in on non-baseball culture and news of the world.

The photography is stunning and the prose magnificent, combining for one of the most enjoyable composites in memory.

Moving from still to motion pictures, we have REEL BASEBALL: Baseball's Golden Era, The Way America Witnessed It -- In the Movie Newsreels by Les Krantz. Before the ESPN and Internet generation of video highlights available for viewing and downloading 24/7 --- in fact, even before television was a staple of the American household --- the only way many baseball fans could get a glimpse of their heroes was from grainy black and white newsreels by Movietone and Universal shown at the neighborhood movie house, where they were treated to such rousing images as Babe Ruth (who merits his own section in the book) trotting around the bases after clouting another majestic home run. Krantz has collected an eclectic assortment of what he considers significant events along with their back stories and other factoids; some are instantly recognizable while others are pleasant walks down memory lane.

As with many books such as this, fans, especially older ones, might have a bone to pick with the author/editor.

The highlight of the book is the accompanying hour-long DVD featuring two-dozen newsreel examples, including Lou Gehrig's farewell speech, Ted Williams's home run in his final at bat and Don Larsen's perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series.

In fact, Larsen's "perfecto" merits a book of its own. PERFECT, ONCE REMOVED: When Baseball Was All the World to Me marks the golden anniversary of the only no-hitter ever tossed in World Series history. That this account is written by Philip Hoose, a cousin of Larsen's, makes it all the more poignant.

Hoose, who has written on a variety of subjects from the environmental to American history, recalls a lonely time as the new kid at school, unremarkable in most ways, until he discovers that he is related to a major league baseball player. Acceptance by association! At least a little bit, anyway. It made Hoose a better player (at least in the immediate timeframe). But the author lived many a young fan's dream, meeting his famous cousin and other heralded Yankees of the mid-1950s.

PERFECT, ONCE REMOVED invokes a feeling of nostalgia for the things we loved as kids, when our biggest problems were getting picked for sports teams and fitting in among our peers.

Hoose doesn't end there, however. Almost half a century later, he paid a call on Larsen to catch up. It's obvious they had not been in close contact for a while, and there's a feeling of discomfort as Hoose wonders why he made the journey to Larsen's home. What do they have in common besides a few shared memories and bloodlines?

The "serious" baseball title of the year has to go to Brad Snyder's A WELL-PAID SLAVE: Curt Flood's Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports.

Flood, an all-star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s, refused to allow himself to be traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. He later sued baseball, against all odds, for the right of an athlete to decide, to any degree, his destiny.

While his immediate efforts were a personal failure (the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against Flood in 1972), it did open the door for future athletes to reap millions and enjoy freedoms the founding fathers of the game never envisioned.

Several years ago one African-American player said he didn't know anything about Jackie Robinson, who courageously broke baseball's color line in 1947. I wonder how many of today's athletes, regardless of their area of expertise, are unaware of the sacrifices Flood made.

(Another book, STEPPING UP: The Story of Curt Flood and His Fight for Baseball Players' Rights, by Alex Belth (Persea), hit the bookstores this year, which has to be somewhat strange considering there's no great anniversary involved, either in Flood's birth or death [in 1997 at the age of 59], the Supreme Court decision or the "birth" of free agency.)

Snyder --- whose previous book, BEYOND THE SHADOW OF THE SENATORS, won the Robert Peterson Recognition Award from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) --- manages to make a potentially dry subject, with its legalistic language and management/labor theme, a readable piece of narrative as he describes an era when civil rights were still not guaranteed. Flood and other black players, such as Cardinals teammates Bob Gibson and Bill White, still had to fight for the right to stay in the same hotels and dine at the same restaurants as their Caucasian teammates. As an up-and-coming player, the California-born Flood had to hone his skills on minor league teams in the Deep South amid repulsive conditions. No wonder that, after more than a decade in the majors, he wrote to baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to complain that he deserved better than to be treated "as a piece or property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes."

Snyder also details the contributions of other "players" in the legal drama, including Marvin Miller, head of the players' union at the time, and former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who took on the case as Flood's attorney.

Tirelessly researched and amply notated, A WELL-PAID SLAVE should be required reading for every ballplayer as a reminder of the sacrifices made by one man so that they could enjoy the rich rewards of their own labor.

   --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan (RonKaplanNJ@comcast.net)

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