Most people think that baseball is just a sport. But rid yourself of the sloppy hot dogs and frothy beers and what remains is the well-mannered clash of titans, played out in a patch of rarified turf-the perfect terrain for cultural myth. For William Wegman, the sanctity of this male ritual is a place to lift one's leg; so, in Dog Baseball, men are replaced by their best friends, a pack of glistening weimaraners. Wegman loads the bases with canine buffoonery and the surety that chasing a ball isn't just man's work. Chip Lord's Ballplayer has monologuist Richard Marcus taking to the field after he strikes out with his girlfriend. Sheltered by the male camaraderie of the game, he finds refuge in the broken hop of a hard grounder, the nice save in center field. But the nostalgic idyll ends when the free agents of corporate baseball become analogs for his lover's infidelity. Pursuing the semiotics of celebrity, Doug Hall headed for the plate at Candlestick Park. Game of the Week charts his artist's residency with the S.F. Giants, including on-camera appearances by Willie McCovey and Darrell Evans. In this witty exposé, chewing tobacco, positioning your cap and strutting that strut become important facets of a sport where media-derived folklore is churned out daily. In A Spy in the House that Ruth Built, Vanalyne Green intrudes on the "city of men," only to find that her interest in bats and balls has far-reaching implications. Using memorabilia, photographs and original footage, she roots through the pop cultural meaning of the game looking for a way home. It's no balk when Green realizes that the diamond echoes a mons pubis and that the game itself is a sexual rite suspended in a calm, masculine zone. Still, the mystery of this most American sport returns her to a childhood filled with images of her father and mother. Baseball may be a seasonal game, but for spiritual regeneration, diamonds are forever. Steve Seid