HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

What: “Tales From the Giants Dugout�

Author: Nick Peters

Publisher: Sports Publishing, LLC

Price: $19.95

This is another in a series of “Tales From ... “ baseball books from Sports Publishing. They usually are written by a newspaper beat writer or columnist who follows a particular team. In this case author Nick Peters, who writes for the Sacramento Bee, is in his 43rd season as a Giant beat writer.

There is also a “Tales From the Angels Dugout� book on the market. It was written by Orange County Register columnist Steve Bisheff.

These books are not intended to be all-encompassing, tell-all history works. But that doesn’t mean the books are not enjoyable reading for fans of the team that is featured, or fans of rival teams. Naturally, there is a lot about the Dodgers in this 233-page book. And there’s even a little about the Angels -- but very little. Game 6 of last year’s World Series, a momentous event in Angel lore, gets only four paragraphs.

The Giant book is a bit disjointed and seems to be rather haphazardly put together. There is no real flow. But that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of interesting anecdotes.

It begins with the Giants’ move from New York to San Francisco in 1958. Their first game on the West Coast was played against another team that had abandoned the New York area, the Dodgers.

The two teams introduced major league baseball to the West Coast on April 15, 1958, before an overflow crowd of 23,448 at San Francisco’s Seals Stadium.

Dodger fans might want to flip through to Page 68. That’s where a chapter on the Giant-Dodger rivalry begins. Of course there is a whole segment on the incident in which Giant pitcher Juan Marichal hit Dodger catcher John Roseboro over the head with a bat during a 1965 game. Peters notes a few pages later that one of the best fights involving the Dodgers and Giants was between San Francisco Manager Charlie Fox and the Dodgers’ third base coach, Tom Lasorda, in 1973.

There are a lot of nuggets like that in this book, which although written from a Giant perspective, can be enjoyed by Dodger fans as well.