In his book “Baseball: A History of America’s Favorite Game,” George Vecsey offers a wonderfully readable account of baseball’s origins and milestones, from its first days in America through the continuing steroids controversy.

The book, recently released in paperback, is extremely well-written by a knowledgeable fan, full of intriguing stories and anecdotes that provide a peek into baseball’s history.

And while the book was engaging and fun, that might well be its biggest fault: it’s just a peek.  If you’re looking for a chronological account that solidly outlines the history of baseball in America, a story full of times and dates with everything placed in context, you won’t find it here.

Still, that may well be by design. To fully delve into all that, to satisfy the hardest of hardcore baseball fans, the book would need to be at least three times as big as it is now: a slim 222 pages, minus the addenda. Think of how many DVDs the documentary by Ken Burns fills.

That slimness may also explain why the book, at times, and despite Vecsey’s normally crisp and clear writing style, seems to be missing words, phrases or even entire transitions. At times, the book seems a little choppy, as if it was intentionally whittled down to a smaller size and necessary parts were removed.

And Vecsey, a longtime fan who grew up with the Brooklyn Dodgers, occasionally comes off as something of a curmudgeon, that old grandfather who had to walk 12 miles in the snow to get to Ebbets Field.

But despite all that, the book is full of fun tidbits and stories, things that the hardcore fan knows already or will enjoy reading again, as Vecsey presents it. And with that small size, it’s perfect to take to the ballpark with you, to put away a few pages between innings.