Hardball

More a sociological study than a book about sandlot baseball, Coyle, senior editor of Outside magazine, takes us inside Cabrini-Green, the nation's second-largest housing project in one of Chicago's most crime-ridden neighborhoods. We enter a society whose pecking order is determined by guns and crack and where status is marked by Air Jordans. The Near North Little League/African-American Youth League came into being because of the efforts of white Bob Muzikowski, a former drug addict turned Christian insurance executive, and African American Al Carter, who worked for the city's Department of Human Services. Between them a sometimes cool political alliance existed as they strived to help the project's 8- to 12-year-olds. We meet the Kikuyus team: Calbert, the earnest, asthmatic, junk foodie; Freddie, a 44, 100-pound butterball with a great fastball; and Maurice, who always called ``I got it. I got it,'' but seldom did. Through the imprisonments, shootings and AIDS deaths that mark the ghetto, we see the Kikuyus coalesce as a team. This heart-wrenching tome offers little hope as crack and guns continue to control the project, but as Maurice says: ``It ain't really so bad, living here. In summertime, we play baseball.'' BOMC and QPB featured alternates; film rights to Paramount. (Jan.)