Baseball best-sellers, Jan. 2

Happy New Year, everyone. Hope nothing but the best comes your way in 2015, including the best baseball books available.

Almost done with the non-baseball book and greatly looking forward to catching up on my regular reading, writing, and wrangling authors, filmmakers, and artists into discussing their work on new podcast segments.

In the meantime, here’s the drill:

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…

As you may have notice in recent weeks, the output on the Bookshelf has been sparse. Received a one-week extension on my new book, which means it will be that much longer until things return to “normal.”

So without further ado, 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.

Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter
2015 Baseball Forecaster: An Encyclopedia of Fanalytics, by Ron Shandler
Baseball Prospectus 2015
Baseball America 2015 Prospect Handbook: The 2015 Expert guide to Baseball Prospects and MLB Organization Rankings
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Bill James Handbook 2015
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
Triple Crowned: The San Francisco Giants’ Incredible 2014 Championship Season
2014 World Series Champions: San Francisco Giants, by MLB
Glory Days in Tribe Town: The Cleveland Indians and Jacobs Field 1994-1997, by Terry Pluto and Tom Hamilton

Only one book abut Jeter in the top 10? How quickly they forget.

Now that the dust has settle from the winter meetings, it’s time to get serious about our fantasy teams. Several books are available for “students” of the game, including Forecaster, Baseball Prospectus, the Prospects handbook and the Bill James annual (they should only have studied so hard in school.) Only James is available right now.

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

If you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. There haven’t been any in awhile. 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 :).