BASEBALL, AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns, Alfred Knopf, $60, 486 pages.

The series and the season are history, but Baseball lives on.

In “Baseball, An Illustrated History,” the sweet smack of a Ted Williams bat, the mellow wisdom of Buck O’Neil, the granite jaw of John McGraw, the intimate quarters of Ebbett’s Field, are all here.

As in the series, the accompanying book portrays baseball as more than a sport — a simple business to some, it is a metaphor on life to others.

Like life, there are giants in these pages, but there are failures as well.

From the primative pastoral predecessors to pickup games between Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, to the modern, colossal stadiums that now draw millions to see millionaires, Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns return the poetry to a child’s game.

The chapters — there are nine of them, of course — cover all the bases.

David Lamb, a University of Maine graduate, wrote of the minor leagues, where hopes are spawned on rundown fields. It is here that high school and college stars earn minimum wage as they pursue the unlikely — that they will make it to The Show.

And it is here that the love of baseball is perhaps at its purest.

“If I work my butt off, even if things don’t pay out,” one player told Lamb, “I know that one day my kid can say, `Hey, my old man played a little ball and he got paid for it.’ ”

And, as with the series, the book is dominated by celebrities speaking of their own rabid affections. Political columnist George Will writes of baseball’s golden era in the 1950s, writer Thomas Boswell draws the similarities between baseball and religion, and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells of her father teaching her to score a game.

This is an immense book — in heft and in subject — and its weight is buttressed by an enormous amount of photographs.

There is Ruth, fat and broken, hobbling along the basepaths after his 60th homerun, there is the Alaskans’ 1925 team photograph as they play in the Juneau City League, there is the impossible stretch of Satchel Paige — all 6-foot-3 and 130 pounds of him — and there is Pete Rose, landing with a thud and a grunt on his way to third base.

If there is a dominant theme besides a fan’s undying love for a sport, it is the battle for blacks to be allowed to play in the major leagues.

This saga is thread throughout the book and the series, as it has been with American history. Burns and his scores of filmmakers are likely introducing an entire generation to the trials of Jackie Robinson, the showmanship of Paige, and the bitter exclusion of Josh Gibson, one of the greatest baseball players in history.

“The best hitter that I’ve ever seen,” O’Neil said of Gibson. “He had the power of Ruth and the hitting ability of Ted Williams. That was Josh Gibson.”

Although this history is wood pulp and ink, the stories come alive: you can see the menace of Ty Cobb’s spikes as they arrive knee-high, hear the taunts tossed at Jackie Robinson as he ran onto the field, taste the dust of the infield, hear the crowd roar in disbelief as Roger Maris cracked his 61st.

This book is baseball and it is history, but it is more — it is our story.

John Ripley covers legal affairs for the NEWS