Baseball Best-Sellers, February 1, 2019

Headnote: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so 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 powers-that-be over there 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 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. For example, this week the #2 book on the baseball best-seller list is The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. “Why” is a good question.

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

Baseball Prospectus 2019
The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2019, by Steve Pisapia
The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, by Jane Leavy
Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Met’s First Year, by Jimmy Breslin
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Baseball America 2019 Prospect Handbook
Ron Shandler’s 2019 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
The Story of Baseball: In 100 Photographs, Sports Illustrated
I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson, by Jackie Robinson with Alfred Duckett
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood

E-BOOKS

The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking, by Russell A. Carleton
Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
Moneyball
The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2019
Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert Creamer
Francona: The Red Sox Years, by Terry Francona and Dan Shaughnessy
2019 NFHS Baseball Rules Book
The Big Fella
The Fantasy Benefit: 2019 Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide, by Justin Mason
2019 Fantasy Baseball Almanac and Draft Guide, by Sean Ryan

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)

Moneyball, (read by Scott Brick, #28 overall in sports)
Astroball, (read by the author, #35)
The Big Fella (read by the author and Fred Sanders, #64)
I Never Had It Made (narrated by Ossie Davis, #87)

The Big Fella is #2 on the current New York Times‘ monthly sports list. The Story of Baseball in 100 Photographs is #6.

Books relating to building your fantasy league/team remain hot. A surprise is Breslin’s classic about the early Mets. The only thing I can think of — and it’s pretty random — is the new HBO documentary, Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists, about two renown New York newspapermen, Pete Hamill being the other. Then again, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Mets’ “Miracle” championship, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Not too much of a surprise is the Robinson memoir, since yesterday would have been the icon’s 100th birthday.

Not on either the Amazon or Times‘ lists? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. Today: 1,391,889; last time: 393,258. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,339,707 (last time, 794,750). I think it would be cool if one day they ranked back-to-back, although I would prefer it at a much higher number.

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.

A reminder: I’ll be appearing on an author’s panel at the annual SABR Day event at the Hoboken Public Library, 500 Park Avenue, from Noon-4:15 p.m. Other panelists include Howard Megdal (The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players; The Cardinals Way: How One Team Embraced Tradition and Moneyball at the Same Time; Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves; and Wilpon’s Folly: The Story of a Man, His Fortune, and the New York Mets) and Lincoln Mitchell Will Big League Baseball Survive?: Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball and Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues).