Heart of the Order

Baseball, writes Boswell, is meant to be ``silly, lyric, inexplicable, slightly rebellious and generally disreputable.'' In this collection of his sports columns from the Washington Post , he captures those elements and many more in an exceptionally fine examination of the national pastime that rivals his earlier Why Time Begins on Opening Day and How Life Imitates the World Series. The two main sections of the anthology are ``The Heart of the Order,'' about the single player at each position who has the most ``heart,'' and ``Five Octobers,'' about the World Series from 1984 to 1988. There are also essays on heroes like Joe DiMaggio and Ozzie Smith, managers Earl Weaver and Sparky Anderson and observations on the game, such as ``The Worst Damn Team in Baseball.'' This is sportswriting at its most literate. (Apr.)