Baseball best-sellers, Sept. 5

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.

Moneyball, by Michael Lewis
Derek Jeter: Born to be a Yankee, NY Post
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
The Closer, by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey. (Bookreporter.com review)
Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams
Where Nobody Knows Your Name, by John Feinstein (Bookreporter.com review and Bookshelf Conversation)
The Mental Game of Baseball, by H.A. Dorfman
A Nice Little Place on the North Side, by George F. Will
The Baseball Drill Book, by the American Baseball Coaches Association

So that’s four instructional-type books in the top 10. Must be because school is back in session and athletes are trying out. That also might be why The Natural is so high; perhaps it’s being used in a lot of literature courses.

Although there’s no baseball book, per se, on this week’s NY Times‘ best-seller list, it’s worth noting that Charles Krauthammer’s Things That Matter (#24) includes several essays regarding his love for the national pastime in general and the Washington Nationals in particular.

Not on this list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Still can’t understand how things work on the Amazon rankings. Last week I wrote how dejected I felt after seeing it fell under (over?) the one million mark in the rankings. On Wednesday it have moved up to 189,000+; right now it’s an even 536,700. Point is, there’s still a long way to go to get it into the top 10, so ya’ll are gonna do something about that, right? Only 10 copies left on Amazon.

And if you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. Doesn’t have to be long (or even complimentary, if you didn’t like it), but anything would be appreciated. And thanks to those who have :).