Baseball Best-Sellers, May 29, 2015

NEW STUFF: I have been posting these things long enough now that a few have commented that the introductory section isn’t necessary anymore. But I’m leaving it in because, to paraphrase Joe DiMaggio when asked why he played so hard all the time, there may be people who’ve never read the best-seller entries before. So…

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.

Pedro, by Pedro Martinez and Michael Silverman
Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak, by Travis Sawchik
The Journey Home: My Life in Pinstripes, by Posada with Gary Brozek
Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
Tommy Lasorda: My Way, by Colin Gunderson
Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Molina: The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty, by Bengie Molina
The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes, by Gary Cieradkowski
The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers, by Jon Pessah

Basically, some jockeying among last week’s leaders. By the way, I have a “double review” of the Martinez and Posada books coming on tonight via Bookreporter.com,

Pennington’s book is #7 on the latest NY Times‘ sports best-seller list. Also in the top 20: Moneyball (11), John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name (12); Jim Kaat’s If These Walls Could Talk (14); and I Never Had It Made, by Jackie Robinson (18). So why hasn’t there been any reviews of baseball books to this point?

Not on either list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. As of this post, the ranking is 573,241, down from last week’s 235,774. Still, we can do better (looking for a Father’s Day/Graduation present?). If you have read it, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page. There haven’t been any in awhile. 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.