Baseball Best-Sellers, December 9, 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.

NEW: To give a sense of context, I’m including where each book falls in the overall Amazon rankings.

Sports Illustrated Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Champions Commemorative Issue
Won for the Ages: How the Chicago Cubs Became the 2016 World Series Champions, by the Chicago Tribune via Triumph
LIFE Chicago Cubs: Champions at Last
The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Jeff Silverman
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
2016 World Series Champions – Chicago Cubs, by Major League Baseball
Incredible Baseball Stats: The Coolest, Strangest Stats and Facts in Baseball History, by Kevin Reavey and Ryan Spaeder
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team, by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller
Fly the W: The Chicago Cubs’ Historic 2016 Championship Season, by Daily Herald *
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan

* Making its debut on this list

Cubs titles continue to dominate, including holding the same top three. With the exceotion of Fkying the W, the other nine books were all on last week’s list.

NY Times: Won for the Ages comes in at #8 and the volume put out by MLB is #15 on the current list.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 1,159,428; last week: 439,160. Yikes! Makes a great holiday gift.

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.