People love anniversaries, especially in sports. One can always count on a book or two (or three) to recognize such historic occasions.

The 1927 New York Yankees assembled perhaps the greatest collection of athletes in history. Harvey Frommer, who has made a cottage industry out of writing about New York baseball, reaffirms that claim with FIVE O'CLOCK LIGHTNING: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, The 1927 New York Yankees.

The subtitle represents a problem that fans have had for generations. Everyone knows about Ruth, Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and a handful of other regulars. But a team is made up of 25 players, and Frommer gives all of them their due. Using team photos from that year, he gives more than a passing glance at the "spear carriers" who fill out the Yankees' roster.

Frommer reports on the games, as the reader witnesses the Yankees building their reputation as the Bronx Bombers; Ruth's 60 home runs were more than the combined totals of most other teams. But the author makes the players more human, more accessible. Gehrig, for instance, endured a two-week slump towards the end of the regular season because he was so distraught over his ailing mother. Can you recall Joe Giard, Paul Krichell and Walter Beall? Frommer includes their stories, supplementing their contributions on the field with substantial background material, including their lives in post-baseball retirement and a chronological necrology. Such intimate details are unusual in the rough-and-tumble genre of sports books.

Stepping back a bit further in time, Bill Felber recalls another pitched battle for baseball supremacy in A GAME OF BRAWL: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant. Modern fans will note that the Orioles of that era eventually morphed into the Yankees, while the Beaneaters were the ancestors of the Red Sox.

Felber runs through a fairly standard account of the season, as the "Bostons" depose the hardscrabble Orioles from their three-year reign as baseball's champions. What makes A GAME OF BRAWL compelling is the context of how different the game was in that era. Home teams had the option of batting first or last, and often chose the former because the ball --- and most games only had one available --- was at its best quality. While today's games use a four-man umpiring team (six in the postseason), the burden fell to just one umpire prior to 1898, leading to all sorts of gamesmanship (i.e., cheating), and the old Orioles were considered the masters. If the poor referee's call went against the home team, the local constabulary were often forced to offer their protection from rowdy fans with violence on their minds; lurid chapter headings tell of "Suspected Criminals" and "Sunday Misdemeanors."

Travel and living conditions were also relatively primitive. A road trip meant slow passage on a train or boat, and kept the teams away from home for upwards of a month. It's amusing to hear a player in 1897 complain about how superior the game was "in the old days."

The 1966 Baltimore Orioles were, in some ways, the modern-day Bronx Bombers. With a roster that included future Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Luis Aparicio and Jim Palmer, they handily beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Tom Adelman published BLACK AND BLUE: Sandy Koufax, the Robinson Boys, and the World Series That Stunned America to mark the 40th anniversary of the four-game sweep.

Adelman employs a fairly standard method, alternating chapters as he follows the fates of both teams as they plod through the season. The author mixes non-sports events to justify the need for the distraction of the national pastime for a country dealing with such issues as racial unrest and the war in Vietnam. Some players --- including the Dodgers' Don Drysdale and the O's Brooks Robinson --- visited U.S. troops after the season, boosting morale as did their baseball brethren during World War II.

In a typical example of sports hyperbole, Adelman calls the four-game sweep by Baltimore "one of baseball history's biggest upsets." Granted, the oddsmakers gave the nod to the more experienced Dodgers, but one could argue that the Arizona Diamondbacks' win over the Yankees in 2001 or the Mets' victory over the same Orioles in 1969 might come higher on the list.

Such potential overstatement could also be applied to THE BEST GAME EVER: Pirates 10, Yankees 9: October 13, 1960 by Jim Reisler, which captures the excitement of another spectacle considered by many as one of the most memorable events in baseball's long history.

There is no denying the thrills produced as a pipsqueak team from Pittsburgh overcomes the mighty Yankees in the deciding game, thanks to Bill Mazeroski's walk-off home run. But a dispassionate examination shows that "best" is a relative term (see above). The Pirates had a two-run lead going into their final frame, only to have the Yankees tie the game. Mazeroski's homer came with only one out, and his team would not have lost the game at that point had he not clouted it out --- the worst that would have happened is that the game would have gone into extra innings. There are also several errors that found their way into the book, which is somewhat ironic since Reisler points out others' mistakes in his narrative.

For the Chicago Cubs, participation in a World Series was postponed for at least one more year after the team from the Northside was eliminated in the first round of the 2007 playoffs.

Their fans can bide their time by reading THE CUBS: The Complete Story of Chicago Cubs Baseball by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson. This handsome coffee-table edition has a "Burnsian" feel as it covers the sorrowful team from its inaugural campaign in 1867 through the "Bartman" era, when a fan's over-exuberance cost the Cubbies what seemed like a sure chance at the World Series in 2003. Stout wrote the text, while Johnson selected and edited from the hundreds of thousands of photos. Interspersed among Stout's history lessons are essays by rabid Cubs fans, including Scott Turow, Penny Marshall and legendary Chicago journalist Mike Royko.

It's hard to believe now, but the Cubs were once one of the marquee teams of baseball, winning four pennants and two World Series in a five-year stretch. Of course that stretch ran from 1906-1910, and the last World Championship came in 1918. They have not returned to the Fall Classic since local tavern owner William Sianis and his pet from the 1945 Series. From 1946 to the present day, they've endured "the Curse of the Billy Goat." Ridiculous? Do you have a better explanation?

Baseball pundits say that the beauty of baseball is that every game provides the opportunity to see something you've never seen before. Maybe that will happen in the 2007 World Series. Perhaps they will write a book about it 50 years from now.

   --- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan