With a line-up of essayists that includes Red Smith, Robert Creamer, Wilfred Sheed, and Tom Wicker, this coffee-table volume, which separates the game"s rich history into decades, reached all-star status the day it debuted almost 20 years ago. It is literate and literary, but so are many of baseball"s best books; no other one connects its words with its hundreds of photographs in such an elegant double-play.