Baseball Best-Sellers, February 26, 2021

Just as Opening Day is just around the corner for players, so is it also for readers about the national pastime. The schedule might not be the same: there won’t be multiple releases every day, not even one a week, at least not on a regular basis. But the “rookies” will be hitting the shelves soon, so there is that to look forward to.

Now for the usual spiel:

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. Baseball America 2021 Prospect Handbook
3. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2021, by Joe Pisapia
4. Ron Shandler’s 2021 Baseball Forecaster
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. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman
9. The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book: A Collection of Amazing Trivia Quizzes and Fun Facts for Die-Hard Yankees Fans!, by Ray Walker
10. The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, by Keith Law

E-BOOKS

1. 1. The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship, by David Halberstam
   2. Baseball Prospectus
   3. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2021
   4. I Never Had It Made, by Jackie Robinson with Alfred Duckett
   5. The Last Real Season, by Mike Shropshire
   6. Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
   7. The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, by Ben Bradlee Jr.
   8. Moneyball
   9. Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play, by Bill White with Gordon Dillow
   10. October, 1964, by Halberstam

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. Moneyball
2. Ball Four
3. Heads-Up Baseball
4. Ninety Percent Mental
5. Moneyball
6. Smart Baseball
7. The Mental Game of Baseball
8. The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
9. Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask
10. The MVP Machine

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.

The Inside Game — one of the better books about the new “modern” baseball — is back. A good primer for what’s going on today. (Here’s my Bookshelf Conversation with the author.)

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.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 624,026 overall in books (and in the top 100 at #84 in “Literary Bibliographies & Indexes”); last time, 2,057,734,. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,351,553 (last time, 1,007,358).

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.