Fred's Book Club: A Little Bit of Baseball.

Happy Wednesday, you all, and welcome to a tiny little edition of our Humpback Writers, the so-called book club held on the so-called Hump Day of the week, Wednesday. There's no good reason for the name, so we just have to live with it.

If it is possible to know anything about this book feature so far, it's that: A) The books can be of any kind at all, as long as they're books, and B) Far too often they are out of print. And that, sad to say, is the problem with today's book, Baseball: Diamonds Are Forever. But there are some things about it you may find interesting, especially about the book business.

The first thing you should know is: This book is small.

The second thing is: It is a collection of quotations about baseball with illustrations by cartoonist Joe Stites.

This book was part of a series called "Tiny Tomes," published by the Ariel imprint of Andrews McMeel (now Andrews McMeel Universal) in the 1990s into the early 2000s. This book is 128 pages long and only a half-inch thick. It's the kind of thing one used to see all the time at bookstore cash registers, the perfect impulse buy for gifts bags and party tchotchkes and stocking stuffers and shower gifts. But that was before Amazon ate the book business, and the impulse-buyer market has never been the same.

It's kind of a shame, because this book is full of fun quotes, which as far as I can determine are all accurate. Such as:

• "I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity." --Bill Veeck
• "You know when you got it made? When you get your name in the crossword puzzle." --Rocky Bridges
• "Girls used to come up to me and say, 'My sister loves you.' Now they say, 'My mother loves you.'" --Lee Mazzilli

It's a fun little book, with a gaggle of cute Patrick McDonnell-ish illustrations by Joe Stites. I was unable to find any information about Mr. Stites, but he seems to have been doing a number of cartoons for stickers and other books around the time this book was printed, in 1997. (Joe, if you're out there, give us a shout!)

I'm sorry that the Tiny Tomes line appears to be defunct, because tiny books have a long history. In fact, there is a group called the Miniature Book Society, and that means they are devoted to the creation and preservation of books no more than three inches in height, length, or width. No, it does not mean that they are little people who like books. Baseball: Diamonds Are Forever is an overachiever by MBS standards, reaching no more than 2 1/8 inches in height and less in other dimensions.

I've seen some tiny books pop up on Antiques Roadshow, and they are Ka-Yoot. Why make little books? Well, beside the fact that tiny books are fun, and people have always loved miniature things, they were helpful for young readers with little hands, or people who were on the go who could only carry something small. Anne Boleyn supposedly had a tiny book of prayers that she took along to her execution, at least according to Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures. I'm sure that was a comfort to Anne -- unless she was taking one last opportunity to catch up on her reading. When I go they will probably find a paperback stuck in my hands.

So that's the story of the smallest book in my personal library, which I did indeed receive as a stocking stuffer some years ago. I was going to wait until February to profile this book, for the return of pitchers and catchers, but I didn't have time to profile a bigger book this week -- so, just a tiny one for ya!