Baseball Best-Sellers, July 31, 2015

July 31, 2015

NOTE: 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 on with the show…

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. The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse, by Molly Knight
  2. The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball’s Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy, by Filip Bondy
  3. The Grind: Inside Baseball’s Endless Season, by Barry Svrluga
  4. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  5. Pedroby Pedro Martinez and Michael Silverman (My review on Bookreporter.com)
  6. Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak, by Travis Sawchik
  7. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman
  8. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
  9. The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
  10. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams

Pretty much the same as last week’s posting. The only difference is the substitution of Williams’ Hitting for Jeter Unfiltered.

New York Times: On the current list, Bengie Molina’s memoir book ranks ninth with Martinez’s at #12, followed by Jon Pessah’s The Game at #15, and Leerhsen’s Cobb bio at #20.

Not on either list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. As of this post, the ranking is 770,292, down significantly from last week’s 579,957. C’mon, people, we can do better than that.

If you have read 501, 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.

 

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