Baseball Best-Sellers, April 15, 2016

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.

The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan
Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
Game 7, 1986: Failure and Triumph in the Biggest Game of My Life, by Ron Darling and Daniel Paisner
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, by Matheny with Jerry Jenkins
If These Walls Could Talk: Milwaukee Brewers: Stories from the Milwaukee Brewers Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box, by Bill Schroeder
The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman
The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend, by Glenn Stout
The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse, by Molly Knight

Indicates titles making their debut on the Bookshelf BBS list.

Leehrsen’s Cobb is back on the list. He recently received the Casey Award from Spitball Magazine and has named winner of SABR’s Larry Ritter Award for “best book related to the Deadball Era published in the previous year.”

Jeff Passan has been making the rounds for The Arm. I wish I had his publicity resources. I always wonder about keeping it fresh in interviews. Do the publishers send a list of talking points? Does the host actual read the book or do they give it to a staffer and have him or her make up the questions? It’s not uncommon to have an author on multiple shows from the same basic entity (NPR) and since I listen to just about all of these things, I listen for the differences and similarities. Just sayin’.

On the April New York Times sports list: Mariano Rivera’s The Closer comes in at #13. If you’re interested, as I am, in how they decide these things, click on the link at the bottom of the list’s page.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 603,441; last week: 490,588. Not great, but at this point, almost three years out, I’m content as long as it doesn’t drop below the one million mark.

If you have read 501, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page; it’s never too late. 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.