In which the author asks himself a number of questions concerning the first occurrence of various baseball phenomena, and then answers them, accompanied by illustrations which are more or less germane. The book is a quick, breezy read, with his discussions of each topic rarely involving more than one page. Obviously, the success of such a book depends on the interest level of the questions, and although some are trite (i.e., hitting streaks) or annoyingly trivial (i.e., knothole gang sections for children), most are pretty well chosen and even diehard seamheads are likely to learn from the book. The illustrations are quite interesting even when they aren't quite on point. There are a few factual errors, and sometimes there is an imprecision in his discussions; he settles for "another player" or "decades later" at times when it would have taken little more work to find out exact names or dates. The book's a worthwhile, hearty browse, though. ( )