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What: “What Baseball Means to Me: A Celebration of Our National Pastime”

Editor: Curt Smith

Publisher: Warner Books

Price: $34.95

This 270-page coffee-table book should be mandatory reading for baseball players and owners who are threatening the national pastime with talk of another work stoppage. What baseball means to our history and our culture is conveyed in essays by some of the most prominent people in our society, and some ordinary people too. There are 172 essays in all.

President Bush, his father, Jimmy Carter and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani are among the contributors. So is Tom Burgoyne, a mild-mannered Philadelphian who transforms himself into the Phillie Phanatic for every Phillie home game. “I’m the only baseball celebrity [Philadelphia fans] never boo,” Burgoyne says.

Tom Brokaw writes about his beloved Dodgers, and Dan Rather about the Houston Buffaloes, a double-A team for which he once did play-by-play. Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan writes about playing stickball in New York.

The book was the brainstorm of baseball historian Curt Smith, a former speechwriter for President George Bush, and Rick Wolff of Warner Books. Smith, whose 10 books include “Storied Stadiums” and “Voices of the Game,” got backing from baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey. In April 2000 they sent letters to people in politics, entertainment, sports, literature, media and other fields seeking unpaid essays about what baseball meant to them.

Nearly 80% responded. Most wrote about their childhood memories. The essays make for great reading, and more than 200 classic photographs, most supplied by the Hall of Fame, make this slick book a collector’s item. If it enlightens the right people about the importance of baseball to this country, that’s an added plus.