Baseball Best-Sellers, April 13, 2018

I’ve decided to bow to the times and include separate lists for e-books and audio books. Be aware that while many titles also appear in print versions, pretty much anyone can produce an e-book these days, so I’m not going to comment at all about the quality. As far as the audio goes, I’m a big fan of these, especially when the author is the reader, since who knows better how it should “sound” than the person who created it?

The other caveats remain the same, however: 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.

In addition, sometimes the list-makers will try to pull a fast one by including a book in a category to which it should not be listed. 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. I’m using my discretion to eliminate such titles here.

Finally, adults only here. That is, no books for younger readers (although no erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme either. And goodness knows there are a bunch of those).

So, with all that said…

PRINT

1. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
2. I’m Keith Hernandez: A Memoir, by Keith Hernandez
3. Ninety Percent Mental: An All-Star Player Turned Mental Skills Coach Reveals the Hidden Game of Baseball, by Bob Tewksbury and Scott Miller
4. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance,, by H.A. Dorfman
5. Miracle in Shreveport: A Memoir of Baseball, Fatherhood, and the Stadium that Launched a Dream, by David Benham and Jason Benham
6. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman
7. The Mental ABCs of Pitching: A Handbook for Performance Enhancement, by H.A. Dorfman
8. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
9. Teammate: My Journey in Baseball and a World Series for the Ages, by David Ross and Don Yeager
10. If God Invented Baseball: Poems by E. Ethelbert Miller

E-BOOKS

1. 2018 Little League Rulebook
2. The Best Seat in Baseball But You Have to Stand, by Lee Gutkind
3. Teammate
4. Moneyball
5. The Year of the Pitcher, by Sridhar Pappu
6. Doc: A Memoir, by Doc Gooden and Ellis Henican
7. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, by Jimmy Breslin
8. Saving Babe Ruth, by Tom Swyers
9. The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers, by Jon Pessah
10. Try Not to Suck: The Exceptional, Extraordinary Baseball Life of Joe Maddon, by Bill Chastain

AUDIOBOOKS (out of the top 100 sports best-sellers. The links will take you to the Amazon page where you can listen to a sample of the book)

1. Moneyball (read by Scott Brick, #15 overall in sports)
2. 90 Percent Mental (read by the author, #19)
3. I Never Had It Made, by Jackie Robinson (read by Ossie Davis, #65)
4. The Catapult Loading System, by  Joey D. Myers (read by James Mintner, #84)
5. Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, by Leigh Montville (read by Scott Brick, #97)

Worth pointing out that there’s nothing about prospects or sabermetric analysis this week, but a lot about the mental aspects of the game. Guess people have pretty much picked their fantasy teams so it’s on to more substantive themes.

Poetry has never been my thing, but kudos for Miller’s work getting into the top 10.

The title of Hernandez’s book — his fourth — is a riff on his 1992 appearance on Seinfeld, but I wonder how many younger readers would know that? I’ll have a lot more to say about this one in the near future.

No baseball titles on any of the New York Times‘ best-seller lists.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ (duh) lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 757,298; last time: 1,493,353. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 703,649 (last time, 991,733). By the way, this article from Sports Collectors Digest puts the Greenberg book at #10 on its list of best baseball books of 2017.

If you have read either of those books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late. (And thanks to those who have.) Doesn’t have to be long or even complimentary, if you didn’t like it. Although I would warn you to understand what it is you’re reading. My editor tells me I shouldn’t worry over bad reviews and normally I don’t. But one Greenberg reviewer complained because apparently he felt it wasn’t long enough and that it wasn’t a full biography. Sorry, but caveat emptor: The title clearly states this book covers just one season in his career. If you’re disappointed for that reason, then that’s on you.

Tagged as: Chicago Cubs, H.A. Dorfman, Joe Maddon, Keith Hernandez, Michael Lewis