Baseball best-sellers, Feb. 6, 2015

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.

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.

Baseball Prospectus 2015
Baseball America 2015 Prospect Handbook: The 2015 Expert Guide to Baseball Prospects and MLB Organization Rankings
2015 Baseball Forecaster: An Encyclopedia of Fanalytics, by Ron Shandler
Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Bill James Handbook 2015
100 Years of Who’s Who in Baseball, by Douglas Lyons (Bookshelf review here.)
2015 Minor League Baseball Analyst, by Rob Gordon and Jeremy Deloney
Heads-Up Baseball : Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood

Who knew? Apparently, The New York Times posts a monthly sports top-10 best-seller list. The only baseball title on the latest listed, published Jan. 20, is “Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter with Anthony Bozza (Jeter Publishing/Gallery Books). The former Yankees shortstop and captain looks back over his career, with photographs from his recently concluded final season, as well as older ones.”

The top seven spots on my weekly list remain virtually intact from last week with the “debut” of Minor League Analyst and the return of a couple of old reliables.

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. I see there have been three recent reviews added. Sweet.