TWIBB: June 25, 2010

The top baseball books, according to Amazon.com as of Friday, June 25.

Title	Rank
General
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis	1
Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball, by Bill Madden	2
The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer’s Inside View, by Doug Glanville	3
The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran, by Dirk Hayhurst	4
The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, by Howard Bryant	5
Essays and Writing
Moneyball	1
The Game from Where I Stand	2
The Bullpen Gospels	3
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams, by John Updike	4
The Mental Keys to Hitting: A Handbook of Strategies for Performance Enhancement, by H.A. Dorfman	5
History
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James Hirsch	1
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu	2
Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s, by Dan Epstein	3
The Philadelphia Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition, by Scott Gummer	4
Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball, by Will Leitch	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
Rotisserie League Baseball, 1996: The Official Rule Book and Draft-Day Guide, by Glen Waggoner	3
Baseball Prospectus 2010	4
Traded: Inside the Most Lopsided Trades in Baseball History, by Doug Decatur	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 rises to #18 on The New York Times hardcover non-fiction list. No baseball titles in Amazon’s overall top 100, but Moneyball and Steinbrenner are in the top 20 sports best-sellers.

It’s news to me: What the heck is a 1996 book about Rotisserie baseball doing in the top five for statistics? And how could it possibly be outselling Baseball Prospectus?

The Bullpen Gospels