Baseball Best-Sellers, August 12, 2022

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

The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit, by Ron Shelton
The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
Rickey: The Life of an American Legend, by Howard Bryant
The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter, by Ian O’Connor
The Recruiting Process: A Baseball Recruiting Guidebook for High School Players and Their Families, by Walter Beede
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson

KINDLE BOOKS

Five Seasons, by Roger Angell
Moneyball
The Church of Baseball
Summer of ’49, by David Halberstam
The Baseball 100
Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition
The Sputnik Season: 1957, by Noel Hynd
The Cloudbuster Nine
A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field, by Roy Lingster
Warren Spahn: A Biography of the Legendary Lefty, by Lew Freedman

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.

Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
The Church of Baseball
The Baseball 100
Rickey
The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter
The Bad Guys Won
Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between
Ball Four: The Final Pitch
Calico Joe
The Matheny Manifesto

So much for Vin Scully. Nothing about him on this week’s list. The Beede book is a reminder that we’re in back-to-school mode.

Looking forward to the SABR convention in Baltimore next week, in no small part because so many authors will be on hand.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,769,176 overall in books; last time, 2,081,454. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,230,068; last time, 2,201,251. Still only $1.99 for the Kindle version. 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.