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What: “One Day at Fenway: A Day in the Life of Baseball in America.”

Author: Steve Kettmann.

Price: $25.

The most intense rivalry in professional sports -- New York Yankees versus Boston Red Sox -- provides the backdrop for Steve Kettmann’s book, a kaleidoscopic rendering of a single game as seen through the eyes of some 25 team executives, coaches, players, fans, an umpire, a groundskeeper and a scoreboard operator inside Fenway Park’s Green Monster.

The Yankees won the Aug. 30, 2003 game, 10-7, but the on-field action, while dramatic at times, is merely a vehicle into the minds of such characters as Red Sox owner John Henry, managers Joe Torre and Grady Little, general managers Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein, writer/director Peter Farrelly, film director Spike Lee and former Senate majority leader George Mitchell.

Yankee owner George Steinbrenner declined to participate, but several anecdotes about him, as told by Cashman, the Yankee GM, and Torre, are among the most entertaining passages.

When Boston’s David Ortiz hits a homer in the third inning, Cashman recalls how Steinbrenner fumed the previous January when the Red Sox signed Ortiz. It didn’t matter to Steinbrenner that the Yankees had Jason Giambi and Nick Johnson to play first base and designated hitter.

“Why didn’t we get him?” Steinbrenner asked Cashman.

“Because we have Nick and Giambi,” Cashman told him.

“Well, I still wanted him,” Steinbrenner said.

“Where are you going to play him?” Cashman said. “You can’t have them all.”

Torre and Cashman recalled a day in 1996 when the pitching staff had been hit by injuries and the club had two rookies scheduled to start a doubleheader at Cleveland.

When informed that Torre was playing golf that morning in Ohio, a furious Steinbrenner demanded that Cashman get Torre on his cellphone.

“Well, I don’t know what the [heck] we’re doing,” Steinbrenner said to Torre. “While you’re out in the ... woods, we’re here trying to figure out how to fix this club.”

There was a very brief pause.

“How the [heck] did you know my ball was in the woods?” Torre asked. “I can’t keep the ... thing in the fairway.”

-- Mike DiGiovanna