Baseball Best-Sellers, August 21, 2020

Note: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish writing one). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes.

In addition, occasionally 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 (in my opinion). For example, a current title on the BBS list is The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. “Why” is a good question. There might be a smattering of the national pastime in it, but not enough to make it a baseball book per se (again, IMO).

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

So, with all that said…

NEW FEATURE: By the way, the links by the authors’ names will take you to any Bookshelf Conversations I did with them.

PRINT

Dick Bremer: Game Used: My Life in Stitches with the Minnesota Twins, by Dick Bremer with Jim Bruton
Doc: The Life of Roy Halladay, by Todd Zolecki
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid, by Willie Mays and John Shea
The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife, by Brad Balukjian
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
Heads-Up Baseball : Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson
The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn

E-BOOKS

October 1964, by David Halberstam
Summer of ’49, by Halberstam
Moneyball
The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, by Ben Bradlee, Jr.
The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams, by Michael Tackett
Doc
42 Faith: The Best of the Jackie Robinson Story, by Ed Henry
Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
Game Used
They Said It Couldn’t Be Done: The ’69 Mets, New York City, and the Most Astounding Season in Baseball History, by Wayne Coffey

AUDIOBOOKS (The links will take you to a sample of the audio via Amazon/Audible.)

Yogi: A Life (by Jon Pessah, read by Oliver Wyman, #34 overall in sports)

The New York Times no longer offers a monthly list of sports best-sellers. There are no baseball titles on their regular weekly list.

Still some good freebies available for the Kindle. Joining the current batch is my own Hank Greenberg bio (see below). Mixed feelings about this but…

And still not on the Amazon top-ten list? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,054,851, overall in books; last time, 1,619,815. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,439,988 (last time, 625,633).

Shameless self-promotion: if you’re looking for some good baseball reading during this down time, why not pick up a copy of 501? It’s like the abridged dictionary; it has most of the other books in it.

Super-shameless self-promotion: And by the way, I am looking for a publisher for an revised edition of 501, UNP having passed on the opportunity. So if you have any suggestions, please drop me a line. Mucho appreciado.

A reminder: There’s an Excel “checklist” of the books list in 501. If you’re interested in keeping track of how many you have read or own, drop me a line.

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.