Baseball Best-Sellers, February 12, 2021

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 2021
2. Ron Shandler’s 2021 Baseball Forecaster
3. Baseball America 2021 Prospect Handbook
4. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2021, by Joe Pisapia
5. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
6. Bill James Handbook 2021
7. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
8. I Had a Hammer, by Henry Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler
9. The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, by Howard Bryant
10. The Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball, by John Helyar

E-BOOKS

1. I Never Had It Made, by Jackie Robinson with Alfred Duckett
2. Baseball Prospectus
3. Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play, by Bill White with Gordon Dillow
4. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, by Jimmy Breslin
5. 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever, by Bill Madden
6. Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
7. I Had a Hammer
8. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
9. The Last Real Season, by Mike Shropshire
10. 2020 NFHS Baseball Case Book

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 titles, 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. The MVP Machine
2. Moneyball
3. Ball Four
4. Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask
5. The Mental Game of Baseball
6. 3 Nights in August
7. The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell
8. The Last Hero
9. Heads-Up Baseball
10. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty

The 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.

No new titles crack the top ten, save for the audio version of Lonnie Wheeler’s bio on Cool Papa Bell. I would like to see un updated version of Helyar’s classic book on the business of baseball, including the 2020 season.

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 weeks ago but have still not heard back. As of this writing, only eight of the top 50 titles in that category are, in fact, free.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 1,879,966 overall in books; last time, 1,588,755,. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,229,779 (last time, 1,108,584).

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.