TWIBB: Oct. 1, 2010

Can’t believe the season is almost over.

The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of 2 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 1.

Title	Rank
General
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams, by John Updike	1
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy	2
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis	3
The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, by Doug Glanville	4
Ball Four, by Jim Bouton	5
Essays and Writing
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu	1
Moneyball	2
The Game From Where I Stand	3
Ball Four	4
The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst	5
History
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu	1
Shattered: Struck Down, But Not Destroyed, by Frank Pastore	2
The Philadelphia Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition, by Scott Gummer	3
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter	4
Roger Maris: Baseball’s Reluctant Hero, by Danny Peary with Tom Clavin	5
Statistics
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	1
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract	2
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tom Tango et al	3
Baseball Prospectus 2010	4
Understanding Sabermetrics: An Introduction to the Science of Baseball Statistics, by Gabriel B. Costa et al	5

(Note: The list includes print editions/baseball titles only, allowing for non-baseball titles and kindle editions that affected the rankings. Also, the rankings change hourly, so the result you get when you visit Amazon.com might not be the same.)

Analysis: There are no baseball books in Amazon’s top 100 overall titles, but three in the top 100 in baseball, including Hub Fans — Updike’s classic essay about Ted William’s final game, originally published 50 years ago — which is ranked 254th for all Amazon titles, not too shabby), Jane Leavy’s forthcoming biography of Mickey Mantle, and, of course, Moneyball. There are no baseball titles on the NY Times list, but I bet it’s just a matter of time before Leavy’s book makes it. I don’t know if it’s savvy marketing, but to release a baseball book in October — when there’s generally no competition — was a crafty decision. Leavy published Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy in 2002. I wonder if her new book will have an ancillary effect in increasing interest in the Maris bio?

It’s news to me: Welcome back to Ritter’s Glory of Their Times. And since school is back in session, it appears an appropriate time for a primer like Understanding Sabremetrics.