Damon Runyon was a sportswriter who made good, but he could just as easily have started out working the police or political beats, any hunting ground that promised a steady supply of vivid characters ripe for the capturing by such a quick-sketch artist. From the evidence of the quirky and lively accounts in this new collection of his baseball writings (Carroll & Graf, 416 pages, $16.95), the game itself did not seem to interest Runyon as much as the characters of which it was composed: the hot-tempered Ty Cobb, who leaped into the stands to stamp out an offending fan; “Turkey Mike” Donlin, “one of the greatest baseball players that ever wore a cleated shoe and one of the most picturesque characters ever produced by the old game”; “Judge Kenesay Mountain Landis, the snowy-haired pooh-bah of baseball”; Arnold Rothstein, the gregarious master gambler accused of fixing the 1919 World Series; and Babe Ruth, “the breath of life in baseball,” who belted two home runs in the 1932 World Series despite the lemons that rained down from the Chicago crowd. (Runyon has no comment on Ruth’s murkily “called” shot in that series.)