Baseball Best-Sellers, July 7

July 7, 2014

Have to rearrange the schedule a bit between last holiday weekend and next weekend’s vacation to California. So…

Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message.

On with the show…

Here are the top ten baseball books as per Amazon.com, as of this posting.

Caveat 1: Print editions only (at least for now); because I’m old school.

Caveat 2: Since the rankings are updated every hour, these lists might not longer be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them. 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.

  1. A Nice Little Place on the North Side, by George F. Will
  2. The Long Season, by Jim Brosnan. Bumped up in no small part by his recent passing.
  3. The Closer, by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey. (Bookreporter.com review)
  4. Pennant Race, by Brosnan. See “2,” above.
  5. Moneyball, by Michael Lewis
  6. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams. A surprise mover, up from the bottom of last week’s top 10.
  7. Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig. Having just marked the 75th anniversary of Gehrig’s iconic farewell address…
  8. Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseball’s Steroid Era, by Elfrink and Garcia-Roberts. Not officially released yet, but nevertheless on the list.
  9. Where Nobody Knows Your Name, by Michael Feinstein (Bookshelf review and Conversation)
  10. Sports Illustrated’s Baseball’s Greatest

Particularly gratified by the inclusion of Brosnan’s two classics on the list. While The New York Times published an obituary in yesterday’s editions (the on-line version was posted several days prior), I’m surprised there hasn’t been more on ESPN.com. Here’s an obit from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, but a quick Google search reveals nothing from St. Louis, Chicago or Cincinnati, where Brosnan spent his career.

Not on this list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Ya’ll are gonna do something about that, right? Just sayin’.

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