HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

What: “Tales from the Diamondback Dugout”

Author: Bob Page

Publisher: Sports Publishing, L.L.C.

Price: $19.95

Like an enticing Hollywood movie script, the 2001 baseball season had it all: a beginning filled with hope, a middle stricken with disaster, and an ending overflowing with triumph.

A storybook finish to the season was just what America and its baseball fans needed after the tragic events of Sept. 11. And at the outset, who could have predicted that riding off into the sunset wearing the World Series crown would be the 4-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks?

Indeed, baseball’s infant franchise defeated baseball’s hallmark franchise, the three-time defending champion New York Yankees, winning the Series dramatically--after trailing by one run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game against baseball’s best closer, Mariano Rivera.

Bob Page, a 28-year veteran of broadcasting and reporter for Fox Sports Radio, examines the script for Arizona’s stunning success in his new book, “Tales from the Diamondback Dugout.” In it, he covers Arizona’s march to baseball immortality, from spring training to the World Series. Yet providing the most insight into this Cinderella story are intangibles.

“There’s nobody immune to abuse [on this team],” center fielder Steve Finley says. “Everybody’s always gettin’ ripped.... We get a lot of good laughs, and that’s what it’s all about.”

The 181-page hard-cover book concludes with comments from Diamondback players on what having won baseball’s top team prize means to them.

“If I step off a curb tomorrow and get hit by a car ... I’ll die a happy man,” veteran first baseman Mark Grace says. “Winning a ring is so important. Now I’ve accomplished everything I ever wanted to do in baseball.”