BASEBALL AND LESSER SPORTS, by Wilfrid Sheed, Harper Collins, 298 pages, $19.95.

This is not just another baseball book, because, for starters, Wilfrid Sheed is not just another hack writer cranking it out to add credits to his resume.

Sheed is, as the book’s publicity blurbs maintain, a shrewd observer and vituoso stylist, congenitally incapable of making an obvious point or turning a flat sentence.

A transplanted Brit who fell in love with the game of baseball at the age of 8, he has written about the subject for Sports Illustrated and other national magazines for the past 30 years. “Baseball and Lesser Sports” is a compilation of the best pieces he has done.

A chapter on Connie Mack, the fabled longtime manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, relieves one of any misconceptions about the saintliness of that baseball icon.

`Mack the Knife,” as Sheed refers to him at one point, dismembered two of the greatest major league baseball teams of all time, in 1915 and 1933, on the grounds that the fans were bored with success. And, apparently, one never knew what the word “frugal” meant until one toiled for Mr. Mack.

When it comes to writing-as-art Sheed is definitely at the head of the class. Exhibit A, from the Mack chapter:

“(Mack) was, at first glance, a funny sort of saint. In the `City of Undertakers,’ he dressed the part to the nines. Connie always seemed to be wearing black, or perhaps one of his festive dark grays, and his cadaverous length was usually stretched further by a derby or straw boater. In this mournful regalia he couldn’t very well go out on the field, so he ran things from the dugout shadows, like an Irish city boss or, I prefer to think, a Renaissance cardinal. He wagged his scorecard as if it were a papal bull, and lesser men went running …”

If you don’t get the picture there, you won’t get it anywhere.

Other baseball greats are dissected in similar fashion, from Branch Rickey to Pete Rose, Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio, Arky Vaughan and Enos Slaughter. Williams, when he wasn’t hitting, Sheed writes, “conducted himself with the jumpy irritability of a man interrupted in the act of love.”

But the book does not dwell on personalities, by any means. Heavier subjects also get a going-over: The vast wasteland that is bigtime television coverage of sports; the politics of getting into baseball’s Hall of Fame; the constantly evolving nature of football; the sportswriting game; cricket as a way of life back home.

My favorite part of the book comes when Sheed sticks it to Howard Cosell, the arrogant, self-important egomaniacal ex-television sports announcer whom I never could stomach (and long before the condition became fashionable, I might add).

He writes of Cosell`s “ability to bore you a lot of ways,” and adds that “the things that make Howard a laughingstock are the very things that make him famous, so he’s stuck with the cap and bells, even while he swears they’re really laurel leaves.”

The book’s final chapter, “Wrapping It Up,” is a poignant essay about retirement and how various big-name athletes have handled it.

Fame has its own pleasures, and being a celebrity is a great way to kill time, according to the author. But fame without performance can be embarrassing. Take Mickey Mantle, for example. The Mick quit baseball after he struck out in an all-star game on three pitches he couldn’t see.

“A standing ovation takes on a funny sound when you haven’t earned it,” Sheed writes.

Kent Ward is the NEWS associate managing editor.