Leave it to that eminent philosopher Yogi Berra to put the national pastime in perspective: "It ain"t like football," he once noted. "You can"t make up no trick plays." Maybe it"s just that physical straightforwardness that has led to so much written and verbal razzle-dazzle on the game. Yogi"s is just one of the many stellar observations collected in The Quotable Baseball Fanatic. Some, like Babe Ruth"s poignant reaction to the Black Sox scandal--"It was like hearing that my church had sold out"--are right over the heart of the matter; others, like Reggie Jackson"s "I represent the underdog and overdog in our society," are straight out of left field. Given baseball"s hold on our imagination, both lines are perfectly fair, as the host of familiar and not-so-familiar quotations that wind up landing safely in between. --Jeff Silverman