Baseball Best-Sellers, May 27, 2016

May 27, 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.

  1. 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. Lindbergh was also the featured speaker at a recent author event at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse. You can hear him on the store’s podcast here:
  2. The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan
  3. 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.)
  4. The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers, by Michael Leahy
  5. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  6. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
  7. The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, by Matheny with Jerry Jenkins
  8. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman
  9. Game 7, 1986: Failure and Triumph in the Biggest Game of My Life, by Ron Darling with Daniel Paisner (My review from Bookreporter.com)
  10. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen (paperback edition)

Pretty static. Noting new and little shifting in the order from last week. The New York Mets are commemorating their 1986 World Championship during their weekend series with the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers, so the return of Darling’s memoir is appropriate.

NY Times: As of last week, there have been no reviews for any of the new batch, which is kind of surprising. Usually these things happen around opening day to mark the beginning of the season., But then again, I’m still waiting for TCM to air The Pride of the Yankees.

Three baseball titles are included in the 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: 448,704; last week: 494,010. Even better. Two weeks in a row of sub-500K? I’ll take it.

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.

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