Baseball Best-Sellers, April 10, 2015

NEW STUFF: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. 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.

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.

Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington
Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades, and Other Thrilling Moments by the Bay, by Andrew Baggarly
Baseball Prospectus 2015
The Real McCoy: My Half Century with the Cincinnati Reds, by Hal McCoy
Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter. (Bookshelf review here).
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams
100 Years of Who’s Who in Baseball, by Douglas Lyons (Bookshelf review here)
Championship Blood: The 2014 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, by Brian Murphy
Fantasy Baseball for Smart People: How to Profit Big During MLB Season, by Jonathan Bales

Here’s the April list of New York Times sports best-seller list (10 plus 10 more). Jeter Unfiltered rises to number six, while John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball joins the fun at number 12. There’s no indication whether these are hardcover, paperbacks, or combined, but given that the Feinstein title has been out for a couple of years, I’m guessing “combined.” It’s also interesting to note that the books are not linked to a vendor site (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, other). Perhaps the Times thinks it unseemly to to try make a few cents via referrals. I obviously have no such qualms.

Now that the season is under way, there are fewer books that would be used as research material for fantasy teams. Populating the list are bios and memoirs about Billy Martin and veteran sports scribe Hal McCoy. I’ve had a chance to read the Martin book and found it excellent (look for my review as part of a larger baseball book feature on Bookreporter.com in the next couple of weeks).

Not on either list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. It made a brief surge last week to the 123,000 range but has dropped to 637,000-ish since. Ya’ll are gonna do something about that, right? Just one or two purchases can move a book up a couple hundred thousand spots. 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.