Baseball Best-Sellers, June 24, 2022

Hard to believe this is already the end of the first half of the year. Where did the time go?

A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes.

In addition, occasionally the powers-that-be over there try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category to which it should not be listed (in my opinion). For example, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect has appeared on the BBS list. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers. Also no “adult” books here, that is, no romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme either (although goodness knows there are a bunch of those).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them. The asterisk denotes the author is a “member” of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club.

PRINT

1. The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit, by Ron Shelton
2. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
3. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant
4. A Year of Playing Catch: What a Simple Daily Experiment Taught Me about Life, by Ethan D. Bryan
5. Swing and a Hit: Nine Innings of What Baseball Taught Me, by Paul O’Neill and Jack Curry
6. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
8. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
9. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
10. Moon Baseball Road Trips: The Complete Guide to All the Ballparks, with Beer, Bites, and Sights Nearby, by Timothy Malcolm

KINDLE BOOKS

1. Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball, by Luke Epplin (My review on Bookreporter.com)
2. The Church of Baseball
3. Rickey
4. Moneyball
5. The Cloudbuster Nine
6. A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field, by Roy Lingster
7. Baseball Immortal: The Second Coming of Ty Cobb, by Roland Colton
8. The Baseball 100
9. Mind of a Superior Hitter: The Art, Science and Philosophy, by Michael McCree
10. Whispers of the Gods: Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age, Told by the Men Who Played It, by Peter Golenbock

AUDIBLE

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual titles, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

1. Rickey
2. Moneyball  (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
3. The Baseball 100
4. A Year of Playing Catch
5. Swing and a Hit
6. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
7. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
8. Calico Joe, by John Grisham
9. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
10. The Matheny Manifesto, by Mike Matheny

The long-awaited (by me at least) behind-the-scenes story of one of the best movies about the game leads off the print list this week. New to the roster: A Year of Playing Catch, which intrigues me in that I have not had a catch since before the pandemic, a situation exacerbated by the auto accident I sustained last year.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,627,229 overall in books; last time, 2,556,293. By the way, as of this writing, the paperback version is just $13.34, a savings of almost 50 percent off the cover price. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,066,056; last time, 2,059,373. Still only $1.99 for the Kindle version which ranks 320,933 and is in the top 40 in three categories: Baseball Statistics (20), Teen & Young Adult Baseball & Softball Nonfiction eBooks (21), and Baseball Essays & Writings (40).

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the abridged dictionary; it has most of the other books in it.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

If you have read either of my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.