Baseball Best-Sellers, December 30, 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.

Sports Illustrated Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Champions Commemorative Issue
2017 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics by Ron Shandler
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Baseball Prospectus 2017
The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Jeff Silverman
Won for the Ages: How the Chicago Cubs Became the 2016 World Series Champions, by the Chicago Tribune via Triumph
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan
Fly the W: The Chicago Cubs’ Historic 2016 Championship Season (Cubs World), by Daily Herald
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team , by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller
Baseball America 2017 Prospect Handbook: Rankings and Reports of the Best Young Talent in Baseball (Feb. 2017 release) *

* Making its debut on the Bookshelf Best-Seller List

Looks like that Cubs dominance is finally starting to give way. Three of the top 10 look ahead to the new season. I wonder if the current political climate has anything to do with the need for even earlier distraction.

MORE lists: Amazon has started a couple of new ones, including “Hot New Releases” and “Most Wished For.” A look at the top three in each:

Hot New Releases

2017 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
Baseball Prospectus 2017
Cubs 2017 Calendar

Most Wished For

Sports Illustrated Cubs edition
Moneyball
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

NY Times monthly sports Best-Sellers list: Won for the Ages ranks #8 and the Cubs book put out by MLB is #15.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 481,053; last week: 933,963. Very good. At this rate it should be #1 in a matter of weeks.

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.