Check It Out:

Local baseball fans may still be feeling the sting from the way the season ended for their teams. Both the Angels and Dodgers were summarily dispatched in their respective league championship series.

Some have expressed their disappointment with talk of avoiding the World Series itself. This would be a shame.

Both the Yankees and Phillies feature potent offenses, good pitching and solid defense. If baseball history is any indication, the stage is set for what should be an entertaining series.

Readers wishing to relive the magic from past World Series will find much to cheer about in the following new books.

In “The First Fall Classic,” Mike Vaccaro recounts the dramatic events of the 1912 World Series between the Red Sox and Giants, which occurred in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign and a sensational New York murder trial.

Several future Hall of Famers — including Christy Mathewson, Tris Speaker, John McGraw and Smoky Joe Wood — took part in this series which the Red Sox won in eight games (game two ended in a tie because of darkness and was replayed the next day).

The author does a good job of recapturing the spirit of the dead-ball era.

Lew Paper retells the story of the only perfect game in postseason history in “Perfect: Don Larsen’s Miraculous World Series.” Pitching for the Yankees in game five of the 1956 series, Larsen retired all 27 batters that he faced without allowing a single base runner to reach first base.

Larsen accomplished this feat against a Brooklyn Dodgers team that included such greats as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snyder, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges. Paper sets them down in order too, going through each inning of the game, and breaking away only to profile the principals in the story.

In “Game Six,” Mark Frost delivers an inning by inning account of game six of the 1975 World Series between the Reds and Red Sox, which ended in the bottom of the 12th after Carlton Fisk’s dramatic home run struck the left-field foul pole at Fenway Park.

The image of Fisk hopping up and down, waving his arms as if to will the ball toward fair territory, will be forever etched in our collective memory of great baseball moments.

Frost’s story also includes profiles of many of the participants. While immersed in the details of this great game, one almost forgets that the Reds won the series in game seven.

“The Machine,” Joe Posnanski’s chronicle of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, offers another perspective of the same season. Loaded with stars such as Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, the Big Red Machine dominated the National League during the regular season and then defeated the Red Sox in an epic seven-game World Series.

The narrative carries the reader along with the team from spring training through the penultimate game six and decisive game seven.

CHECK IT OUT is written by the staff of the Newport Beach Public Library. All titles may be reserved from home or office computers by accessing the catalog at www.newportbeachlibrary.org. For more information on the Central Library or any of the branches, please contact the Newport Beach Public Library at (949) 717-3800, option 2.