TWIBB: Dec. 10, 2010

The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, Dec. 10, at 11 a.m.

Title	Rank
General
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, by Jane Leavy	1
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	2
Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back, by Josh Hamilton with Tom Keown	3
San Francisco Giants Torture to Rapture 2010 World Series Champions, by the San Francisco Chronicle	4
Do You Know the New York Yankees?: Test your expertise with these fastball questions (and a few curves) about your favorite team’s hurlers, sluggers, stats and most memorable moments, by Guy Robinson	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Jeff Silverman	2
The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst	3
Sports Illustrated: The Baseball Book	4
The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, by Doug Glanville	5
History
The Philadelphia Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition, by Scott Gummer	1
Giant Surprise: San Francisco s 2010 World Champions, by	2
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch	3
Sports Illustrated Baseball Book, by	4
The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (Harper Perennial Modern Classics), by Lawrence S. Ritter	5
Statistics
The Bill James Handbook 2011	1
Baseball Forecaster 2011, by Ron Shandler	2
The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2011	3
Great Baseball Feats, Facts & Firsts (2010 Edition), by David Nemec	4
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong	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:

It’s news to me: In addition to its inclusion as a NY Times Notable Book of 2010, The Last Boy was selected as the No. 4 non-fiction title by TIME magazine. Not too surprising is the popularity of the SI baseball book. I would imagine it could be had quite cheaply and makes great holiday gift. Readers of the Bookshelf know my feelings about trivia/quiz books, so the new one on the Yankees doesn’t exactly make me jump up and down.