Baseball Best-Sellers, November 13, 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

1. The Captain: A Memoir, by David Wright with Anthony DiComo
2. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman
3. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
4. Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life, by Bill Madden
5. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
6. Ballparks: A Journey Through the Fields of the Past, Present, and Future, by Eric Enders
7. Bill James Handbook 2021
8. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 42
9. The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection: Celebrating the Game’s Greatest Players, by James Buckley
10. Wait Till Next Year – A Memoir, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

E-BOOKS

1. Moneyball
2. Chumps to Champs, by Bill Pennington
3. Over the Right Field Wall, by G.P. Hutchinson
4. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton
5. Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
6. Doc: A Memoir, by Doc Gooden and Ellis Henican
7. The MVP Machine, by Ben Lindbergh
8. Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life
9. The Catcher Was a Spy,  by Nicholas Dawidoff
10. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman

AUDIOBOOKS

Note: Amazon has changed the way they list audiobooks. No longer under the general category of “biography and memoir,” they are now treated in their own baseball/softball category. Here’s the general link to the section where you will find further links to the individual audiobooks, their reader/narrators, and samples. Note further that these are updated regularly and the top ten list below might no longer be the same.

1. Moneyball
2. Yogi
3. Ball Four
4. The Captain
5. Ninety Percent Mental
6. Heads-Up Baseball 2.0
7. The MVP Machine
8. The Arm
9. The Soul of Baseball
10. The Mental Game of Baseball

New York Times no longer offers a monthly list of sports best-sellers. There are no baseball titles on their latest nonfiction hardcover weekly posting.

This week’s top seller in the “baseball” category on all three lists is Jim Gray’s Talking to GOATs. For the uninitiated, GOAT stands for “greatest of all time.” I remember a time when being labeled a goat was a bad thing. Be that as it may, none of the seven sports figures whose name appears on the book jacket are baseball players so as per my rules, it doesn’t count as a baseball best-seller.

No surprise that NY Daily News veteran sportswriter Bill Madden’s new Seaver bio is a BBS.

Buyer Beware: Amazon’s e-book lists offer the top 100 paid and free titles. But if you look closely, some of the books on the “free” list are in reality not free, so pay attention. I sent a query to Amazon’s customer service about this discrepancy but have not heard back yet.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,150,922, overall in books; last time, 1,479,918. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 650,952 (last time, 1,546,972). The bump on the latter may (or may not) be due to an interview on the Start Spreading the News site.

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.

Tagged as: Baseball Cards, Brooklyn Dodgers, David Wright, Moneyball, New York Mets, Ted Williams, Tom Seaver