TWIBB: June 18, 2010

The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, June 18.

Title	Rank
General
Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden	1
The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime, by Jason Turbow with Michael Duca	2
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James Hirsch	3
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	4
The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
The Bullpen Gospels	2
The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, by Doug Glanville	3
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams, by John Updike	4
Ball Four, by Jim Bouton	5
History
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend	1
The Philadelphia Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition, by Scott Gummer	2
Kiss It Good-Bye: The Mystery, The Mormon, and the Moral of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, by John Moody	3
Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball, by Will Leitch	4
Of Mikes and Men: A Lifetime of Braves Baseball, by Pete Van Wieren	5
Statistics
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks, by Zack Hample	1
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by Tom Tango et al	2
The Bill James Handbook 2010	3
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong, by Baseball Prospectus	4
Baseball Prospectus 2010	5

(Note: The list includes print editions/baseball titles only, allowing for non-baseball titles and kindle editions that affected the rankings. Also, the rankings change hourly, so the result you get when you visit Amazon.com might not be the same.)

Analysis: Bill Madden’s biography on George Steinbrenner drops to #20 on The New York Times hardcover non-fiction list.

It’s news to me: Amazon changes its rankings hourly, so it might well be inaccurate to make a statement at any given time concerning the debut of a book on the list, so I’m changing things around a bit. This week, however, there are no new titles.

The interest in John Moody’s tribute to the 1960 Pirates — is that an editorial comment on how poorly the 2010 version is doing? Just askin’.