Baseball Best-Sellers, January 8, 2021

January 8, 2021

And so we begin again. Hope everyone had as happy and healthy a New Year as is possible under these circumstances. Looking forward to a new season full of interesting topics handled by talented writers.

A reminder: 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 posting them). 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, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect appeared on the BBS list. “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 “adult” books here, that is, no romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme either (although goodness knows there are a bunch of those).

So, with all that said…

The links under the authors’ names will take you to the Bookshelf Conversations I did with them.

PRINT

  1. Baseball Prospectus 2021War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War, by Randy Roberts
  2. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  3. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene (paperback)
  4. Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life, by Bill Madden
  5. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 42
  6. Baseball Prospectus 2021
  7. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman
  8. Wait Till Next Year – A Memoir, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  9. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2021, by Joe Pisapia
  10. Ballparks: A Journey Through the Fields of the Past, Present, and Future, by Eric Enders

E-BOOKS

  1. The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball, by Frank Deford
  2. 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever, by Madden
  3. Moneyball
  4. Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
  5. Let’s Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks, by Ron Rappoport
  6. Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life
  7. The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 – When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone, by Mike Shropshire
  8. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2021
  9. Out of My League, by Dirk Hayhurst
  10. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter

AUDIOOBOOKS

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. Ball Four
  3. Where Nobody Knows Your Name
  4. Yogi
  5. The MVP Machine
  6. The Captain
  7. Moneyball (again)
  8.  War Fever
  9. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty
  10. How Baseball Happened

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.

Here we go with the new batch of “annuals” (Baseball Prospectus, Black Book). 

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 still not heard back. 

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 964,732, overall in books; last time, 1,933,161. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 825,342 (last time, 707,542).

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 my books, thanks, hope you enjoyed it, and please consider writing an Amazon review; it’s never too late.

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