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What: “Out By a Step: The 100 Best Players Not in the Baseball Hall of Fame”

Authors: Mike Shalin and Neil Shalin

Publisher: Diamond Communications

Price: $26.95

Written with the touch of a couple of bleacher bums, “Out By a Step” is an attempt by two brothers to turn the arguments of who belongs in Cooperstown into a light-hearted look at the snubbed, the forgotten, the ballplayers who had above-average careers, but who probably won’t see their bronzed likenesses next to the Babe’s.

Brothers Mike and Neil Shalin take the arguments out of statistics-heavy formulas and resort to the basic question of baseball: Could he play?

In the case of this collection, the answer is a resounding yes. The Shalins do a fine job of briefly describing the contributions each player made to the game, but they write more like fans than historians. Does anyone else really believe Larry Bowa should be joining Honus Wagner anytime soon?

The book presents some players with numbers that merit Cooperstown consideration, such as Bert Blyleven, who had 287 victories in his career and 3,701 strikeouts, much of it with the dreadful Minnesota Twins of the 1970s.

The book also mentions players who have been overlooked for a generation, such as New York Giant shortstop Alvin Dark, whose offensive numbers are nearly identical to those of his famous contemporary, Dodger Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese, and are superior to those of Yankee Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto.

Nevertheless, the Shalins have written an entertaining book for the casual fan and thrown a reminder to mathematically obsessed baseball historians that just because some guys didn’t have exceptional statistics, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t play.