Diamond Jubilee

JOY IN MUDVILLE: The Big Book of Baseball Humor, edited by Dick Schaap and Mort Gerberg (Doubleday: $25; 424 pp.) . It’s settled into an easy rhythm now, the baseball season, the summer: beach time, a portable radio, a jug of juice and “Joy in Mudville,” the best baseball book of the season.

Here’s Damon Runyan effervescing over a creaky, cranky Casey Stengel gimping out an inside-the-park homer on “warped old legs twisted and bent . . . “ Here’s that self-same Stengel at a congressional antitrust hearing, double-talking Sen. Estes Kefauver into a stupor (and Mickey Mantle’s assist: “My views are just about the same as Casey’s”).

Here’s Peter Arno’s classic cartoon: a crusty manager leaning into the box seats to tell a bejewelled matron, “Sometimes we sell them, lady, but only to other teams.” Here’s Chet Williamson yarning about the time Gandhi was nearly coaxed into trying his hand at baseball--a deal queered when the Mahatma insisted that he’d play only for Cleveland.

Here’s Bill Veeck’s 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel and James Thurber’s 2-foot-10 Pearl du Monville and George Plimpton’s Sidd (for Siddhartha) Finch, who slept on yak fur, played the French horn, wore a single hiking boot and threw the baseball 168 miles an hour.

Here’s Yogi, of course, earnestly explaining, “You observe a lot by watching,” and The Times’ own Mike Downey with a send-up of “Who’s on First,” this one centering on leadoff batter Randy Ready and manager Larry Bowa, who tells the ump, “My player’s Ready.” “Good.” “He’ll be out in a minute.” “I thought you said he’s ready.” “He is . . . “

Here’s Neil Simon, Ogden Nash, Philip Roth; Jimmy Breslin limning the loopy charms of Marvelous Marv Throneberry.

The sun, the ocean, the Dodgers on the radio, Breslin on the Mets--it doesn’t get any better than this.