* TWIBB — Oct. 30

This week in baseball books, featuring the best-sellers according to Amazon.com on Friday, October 30.

Title	Rank
General
Now I Can Die in Peace: How The Sports Guy Found Salvation Thanks to the World Champion (Twice!) Red Sox, by Bill Simmons	1
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski	2
Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher & a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk about How the Game is Played, by Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson, and Lonnie Wheeler	3
The Bill James Handbook 2010*	4
The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants and the Cast of Players, Pugs and Politicos Who Re-Invented the World Series in 1912, by Mike Vaccaro	5
Essays and Writing
Now I Can Die in Peace	1
Sixty Feet Six Inches	2
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	3
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton	4
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton	5
History
Now I Can Die in Peace	1
The Machine	2
Sixty Feet, Six Inches	3
The First Fall Classic	4
Perfect: Don Larsen’s Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen, by Lew Paper	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2010	1
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tango, et al	2
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	3
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong	4
Baseball America 2010 Prospect Handbook: The Comprehensive Guide to Rising Stars from the Definitive Source on Prospects	5

* Like last week, the real fourth-place title was Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football by Wayne L. Winston, but since it’s not strictly about baseball, I excluded it from the list. Because that’s how I still roll.

Analysis: Simmons’ book on the Red Sox tops all three non-statistical cetagories. The renewed interest is probably generated by his new release on basketball. Many readers are impulse buyers; if a new title is really hot, they tend to buy other titles by the same author (see, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and all the vampire books). The Machine, Game Six, and The First Fall Classic, and Perfect — four World Series titles — remain in favor. And Sixty Feet also retains its popularity.

Bouton’s Ball Four extension hits the charts for the first time since I;ve been tracking.

Baseball America’s book on prospects makes its debut.

Again, there are no baseball titles in Amazon’s top 100 bestseller list (although there are a couple of basketball books, including Simmons’), nor among the NY Times top 35 non-fictional titles.

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