Baseball Best-Sellers, July 8, 2016

NOTE: 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 on with the show…

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.

House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge, by Lenny Dykstra
Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution, by Brian Kenny (look for a Bookshelf Conversation with Kenny in the coming weeks) *
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan
The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams, by Michael Tackett
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team, by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller. (A review from The Hardball Times. Lindbergh was also the featured speaker at an author event at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse. You can hear him on the store’s podcast here:
The Matheny Manifesto: A Young Manager’s Old-School Views on Success in Sports and Life, by Matheny with Jerry Jenkins
I’m Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love, by Tim Kurkjian (Here’s my review on Bookreporter.com and the “Bookshelf Conversation” with the author.)
The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H.A. Dorfman
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud

* Indicates debut on this list

My weeping for America continues re: Dykstra’s book remaining on the best-seller list (the other meaning for BS?).

Currently reading Kenny’s book and find it interestingly iconoclastic and have to wonder if it’s so just to gain buzz? One notion that was mentioned on an episode of NPR’s Only a Game: eliminating the stats for pitchers’ wins. Whaaa? It even has its own hashtag: #killthewin.

If memory serves, The Natural was on and off the list last summer. I wonder if it’s one of those books assigned over the summer by some high schools?

NY Times: Two baseball titles are included in the most recent (July) Times‘ sports list: The Arm is at #6, with Tom Stanton’s Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society that Shocked Depression-era Detroit at #16.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 1,049,782; last week: 968,167. Come on, folks, 501 is great summer reading.

If you have read 501, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing a review for the Amazon page; it’s never too late. 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.