Baseball Best-Sellers, May 23

The top ten baseball books as per Amazon.com.

Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); I’m old fashioned that way.

Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read it. But it’ll be close enough for government work.

Caveat 3: Sometimes they’ll try to pull one over on you and include a book within a category that doesn’t belong. I’m using my discretion to eliminate such titles from my list. For example, for some reason a recent listing included Tarnished Heels: How Unethical Actions and Deliberate Deceit at the University of North Carolina Ended the “The Carolina Way”, which, far as I can tell, is not at all about baseball, at least not in the main. For the sake of brevity, I will be omitting the subtitles, which have become ridiculously long in in some cases in recent years, also at my discretion.

The Closer, by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey. This moves down to #7 on the upcoming NY Times‘ hardcover non-fiction list. Last week it debuted at #3. Look for my review in the near future on Bookreporter.com.
A Nice Little Place on the North Side, by George F. Will
Where Nobody Knows Your Name, by Michael Feinstein (Bookshelf review and Conversation)
The Yankee Way: Playing, Coaching and My Life in Baseball, by Willie Randolph
Moneyball, by Michael Lewis
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams
Pete Rose: An American Dilemma, by Kostya Kennedy (Bookshelf Conversation)
The Throwback: A Big-League Catcher Tells How the Game is Really Played, by Jason Kendall with Lee Judge
The Mental Game of Baseball, by H.A. Dorfman
1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever, by Bill Madden

Not on this list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Ya’ll are gonna do something about that, right? Although I’m pleased (and surprised) that it’s currently #222,725 — up substantially from yesterday’s 708,000+ (not that I’m counting (continuously)) — you can do better. Father’s Day is coming up, after all. Just sayin’.