Baseball best-sellers, Nov. 7

Note: Just like Chuck Lorre’s “vanity cards” at the end of The Big Bang Theory, you should read these list stories to their conclusion; the end is always changing, even though the theme is basically the same, finishing up with a self-promotional message.

On with the show…

Here are the top ten baseball books as per Amazon.com, as of this posting.

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. For the sake of brevity, I will be omitting the subtitles, which have become ridiculously long in in some cases in recent years, also at my discretion.

The Bill James Handbook 2015
2014 World Series Champions: San Francisco Giants, by Major League Baseball
Triple Crowned: The San Francisco Giants’ Incredible 2014 Championship Season , by Bay Area News Group
Derek Jeter #2: Thanks for the Memories, by David Fischer
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Baseball Prospectus 2015 (February publishing date)
Derek Jeter: Excellence and Elegance, by The New York Times
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams
2015 Baseball Forecaster: An Encyclopedia of Fanalytics, by Ron Shandler (January 1 publishing date)
The Closer, by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey (Bookreporter.com review)

Surprise, surprise. Quickie-productions celebrating the Giants’ latest championship. And now that the season is over, it’s time for fantasy heads to start planning for the 2015 campaign, hence the popularity of two titles that won’t even be available for at least a couple of months.

Not on this list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die, although it is doing a bit better of late. Still, ya’ll are gonna do something about that, right? Only eight (!) copies left on Amazon — and the holidays are coming up.

And if you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. 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 :).