SPORT MAGAZINE'S ALL-TIME ALL STARS

Selecting the best players from over 100 years of organized baseball has been the source of many a barroom brawl. If this effort, an anthology of Sport Magazine reprints from 1948 to 1974, won't settle all the arguments (biggies like Clemente and Mantle are missing), it will provide a detailed look at most of the old-established legends--Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Hornsby--and some upstarts: Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, and Brooks Robinson. The 22 articles, organized by scorecard for each league (including two pitchers and a designated hitter), explode no myths and shatter no illusions; in one of the better profiles, Christy Mathewson remains the god-like ""Big Six,"" though Stan Musial, he of the ""uncluttered mind,"" comes off a disappointingly hollow man. Each anecdotal, statistics-strewn piece reads much the same as the next (there are only so many superlatives, after all), but it's hard to miss with a high-interest cast like the Iron Horse, the Georgia Peach, the Big Train, and the Flying Dutchman.