Red Sox fans will never forget what their team did on Oct. 27, 2004 (won its first World Series in 86 years). And they probably wish they could forget what happened on Jan. 3, 1920 (announced the sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees).

But there are many other dates in Red Sox history, all of which are recorded in “Day by Day With the Boston Red Sox” (Rounder Books), Bill Nowlin’s 600-page paperback whose thousands of entries chronicle everything the Sox did – from the disastrous to the miraculous – on any day during the past 100 years.

The listings cover events on and off the field, during the season and the offseason – the wins and losses, feats and failures, trades and transactions, hirings and firings, and births and deaths.

“Day by Day” is one of several new volumes about baseball that celebrate the personalities, teams, history and quirks of the game, with subjects ranging from the Cubs to Cooperstown, the Negro Leagues to knuckleballs, and superstars to superstitions.

The Red Sox overcame an 86-year “curse” to win the 2004 World Series, and the Chicago White Sox ended a long drought in 2005, winning its first World Championship since 1917. If things happen in threes, this could this be the year of the Chicago Cubs – who haven’t won a World Series since 1908, when Tinker, Evers and Chance turned double plays for them.

If so, fans might require a crash course in Cubs chronicles like that found in “Cubs Essential” (Triumph Books) by Lew Freedman. It offers “everything you need to know to be a real fan” as it covers 130 years of Cubs history in text, photos, and sidebars with trivia, lists, statistics and anecdotes.

But if the Cubs have another dismal year instead, “101 Reasons to Love The Cubs” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang) might be in order. David Green’s illustrated little book taps into team history and lore for its 101 numbered arguments for embracing the Cubbies: Wrigley Field, Ernie Banks, Number 96 (uniform of pitcher Bill Voiselle, whose hometown was Ninety-Six, S.C.), and Jack Brickhouse, longtime broadcaster who shrugs off the team’s World Series woes with, “Any team can have a bad century.”

In “A Great Day in Cooperstown” (Carroll & Graf), Jim Reisler relates the “improbable” birth of the Baseball Hall of Fame and how Cooperstown, N.Y., was chosen as its home after the project’s backers “sold” the fable of Cooperstown as baseball’s birthplace. Along the way, Reisler offers anecdotal profiles of the first 11 inductees, including Ruth, Cy Young, Connie Mack and Tris Speaker.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum commissioned the publication of “Shades of Glory” (National Geographic) by Lawrence D. Hogan, the companion volume to this year’s induction of 17 Negro League players. The narrative covers the history of blacks in baseball, from games played by slaves on Southern plantations to the heyday of the professional Negro Leagues during the 1920s-1940s. There are photos of players, games and artifacts, as well as anecdotal and biographical sidebars.

Tim McCarver said that hitting a knuckleball is “like trying to catch a butterfly with a pair of tweezers.” Backstop Bob Uecker had this foolproof method for catching one: “Wait’ll it stops rolling, then go pick it up.” In “The Knucklebook” (Ivan R. Dee) Dave Clark, “the world’s greatest collector of knuckleball lore,” offers advice on how to throw, catch, hit, teach and even umpire the fluttering, unpredictable, hard-to-control and nearly impossible-to-hit pitch.

“Heroes of Baseball: The Men Who Made It America’s Favorite Game” (Atheneum) by Robert Lipsyte is a large-format, generously illustrated book for readers of all ages. It chronicles the history of baseball through the achievements of some of its greats – Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Curt Flood, Henry Aaron and more. Sidelights provide stories about ball parks, player nicknames, team mascots and records that are unbreakable – so far.

For some baseball players, fruit cocktail, Metamucil, cigars and chewing gum are every bit as important as their spikes and gloves. The superstitions of more than 60 players, past and present, are revealed in “Jinxed: Baseball Superstitions From Around the Major Leagues” (Ballantine Books), edited by Ken Leiker. This glossy book with bold, colorful graphics contains text and photos about players who rely on rituals, and on lucky shirts, socks, towels and gloves – and in one case, even women’s black silk undies – to give them the winning edge.