Baseball Best-Sellers, August 20, 2021

New: An asterisk serves to let you know that the author is a member of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. I enthusiastically recommend you visit the site, sign up for their newsletter, and buy some merch.

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 has 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. The asterisk denotes the author is a “member” of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club.

PRINT

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
Ballparks: A Journey Through the Fields of the Past, Present, and Future, by Eric Enders
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
Till the End, by CC Sabathia and Chris Smith
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
Mind of a Superior Hitter: The Art, Science and Philosophy, by Michael McCree
The Bad Guys Won: A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the … Put on a New York Uniform–and Maybe the Best, by Jeff Pearlman
The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman

E-BOOKS

Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
Moneyball
Eight Men Out, by Eliot Asinof
Foul Ball, by Jim Bouton
The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams, by Bill Bradlee Jr.
Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up, by Alex Speier
The Natural
1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever, by Bill Madden
Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball — and America — Forever, by Tim Wendel
Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play, by Bill White with Gordon Dillow

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.

Curveball: How I Discovered True Fulfillment After Chasing Fortune and Fame, by Barry Zito
Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
The Matheny Manifesto, by Mike Matheny
Ball Four: The Final Pitch
Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing, by Andy Martino
Till the End
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero , by David Maraniss
Baseball, by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
The Science of Hitting

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 only new thing to report is Posnanski’s offering on the game’s “best” 100. Books like this are constantly being updated. Not to mention different authors will have different takes on who ranks. Of course, a book like Maury Allen’s Baseball’s 100 — written almost 40 years ago — can’t include the great players who have come along since then such as Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Trout, and a host of others. Same for the even more ambitious Derek Gentile, whose Baseball’s Best 1,000: Rankings of the Greatest Players of All Time was published in 2008 with revisions in 2012 and 2017; he obviously had a changed of heat to put out the two later works.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 1,312,235 overall in books; last time, 1,891,056. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,474,249; last time, 779,850).

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.

Now we’ll see who pays attention. Removing the “Super shameless self-promotion” section. Look for some exciting news in the near future.

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.