For the uninitiated, the poetic mysteries of baseball can seem elusive if not downright silly. Diamonds Are Forever: Artists and Writers on Baseball (Chronicle), a print version of the Smithsonian Institution exhibition of the same name, doesn’t set out to answer that unanswerable question: “What is it about baseball?” Instead, it quietly illuminates those fragments and impressions—the feel of a well-worn glove, the smell of rain delay—that constitute the magic of the game. In fact, it surrenders fully to crack-of-the-bat nostalgia. This is a lovingly compiled collection of written excerpts (by authors from Carl Sandburg to John Updike) and pieces of visual art (paintings, photographs, ingenious dioramas). Verbal and visual media are given equal space, and all material is organized in a giddy, haphazard quilt that works perfectly.