Baseball Best-Sellers, October 14, 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
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
The Bill James Handbook 2017 (release date November 1, 2016) *
I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson, by Jackie Robinson
House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge, by Lenny Dykstra
The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Jeff Silverman
The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, by Matheny with Jerry Jenkins
The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman
Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution, by Brian Kenny

* Indicates debut on this list

This is the time of year you can start looking for the Jamesian books to start announcing release dates (Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus, et al). But with more and more websites popping up, I wonder if published works will start to decline. The Hardball Times used to issue their books in a roughly letter-sized format but in recent years they’ve employed a smaller trim, no doubt to save some money..

NY Times: The only baseball title on the October list is a one of those quickly-published tribute pieces (it was released September 6) to a retiring legend, in this case, Big Papi: David Ortiz, Thanks for the Memories by David Fisher and David Aretha.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 1,193,269; last time: 1,145,394. I wonder if this one will get a bump when the Greenberg book comes out? Bonus!

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.