Baseball Best-Sellers, May 20, 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 Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team, by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller. (A review from The Hardball Times.)
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan
I’m Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love, by Tim Kurkjian (Here’s my review on Bookreporter.com and the “Bookshelf Conversation” with the author.)
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty , by Charles Leerhsen (paperback)
If These Walls Could Talk: Milwaukee Brewers: Stories from the Milwaukee Brewers Dugout, Locker Room, and Press Box, by Bill Schroeder
The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers, by Michael Leahy *
The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, by Matheny with Jerry Jenkins
The Science of Hitting , by Ted Williams and John Underwood
The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman

Indicates debut on this list

The anecdote used to go that the three teams written about most were the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Chicago Cubs. Makes sense; they are among the oldest teams in the game. But add to the list the Dodgers, whether in the Brooklyn of Los Angeles incarnations. Fans of the Ebbetts Field crew are like the greatest generation in that they’re beginning to dwindle so books about the days of Jackie, Pee Wee and Oisk are similarly fading while the newer titles now consider the LA teams of the6 0s and 70s.

Three baseball titles are included in The New York Times‘ sports list for May. Two aren’t much of a surprise: The Arm (No. 4) and Ron Darling’s Mets memoir (No. 7). The other, however, is pretty stunning: I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson, as told to Alfred Duckett. I can only surmise the increased/renewed interest stems from the recent Ken Burn’s documentary on the iconic ballplayer/civil rights hero. The book, ninth on the Times‘ list, was released shortly after Robinson died in 1972. The Grind: Inside Baseball’s Endless Season, by Barry Svrluga, comes in at number 19.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 494,010; last week: 1,111,362. Woo-hoo! Thanks! At this rate, 501 should be number one very shortly. FYI, I have queried University of Nebraska Press to see if there’s interest in a revised edition in the not too distant future, given that a number of excellent titles have been published in the intervening years.

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.