Baseball Best-Sellers, January 28, 2022

January 28, 2022

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

  1. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
  2. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
  3. Ron Shandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
  4. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  5. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022, by Joe Pisapia
  6. Sho-time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played, by Jeff Fletcher
  7. Against All Odds: The Atlanta Braves’ Improbable Journey to the 2021 World Series, by the Atlanta Journal Constitution
  8. Baseball America 2022 Prospect Handbook
  9. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
  10. Baseball Prospectus 2022

E-BOOKS

  1. Moneyball
  2. The Baseball 100
  3. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
  4. Stealing Home, by Eric Nussbaum
  5. The Captain and Me, by Ron Blomberg and Dan Epstein
  6. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022
  7. A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field, by Roy Lingster
  8. K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, by Tyler Kepner
  9. Pinstripe Empire, by Marty Appel
  10. If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Red Sox, by Jerry Remy

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  (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
  2. The Baseball 100
  3. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
  4. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
  5. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
  6. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams
  7. Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask, by Jon Pessah
  8. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
  9. The Mental Game of Baseball, by H.A. Dorfman
  10. The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany

Nothing new except for the Shohei Ohtani book which won’t be out until July. Make me wonder — once again — about the way they calculate sales over at Amazon. If anyone knows and can share, because they sure haven’t come forward, despite numerous queries. The appearance of the Bonds book is appropriate given the recent Hall of Fame announcement. Kind of surprised David Ortiz’s autobio, Papi: My Story, isn’t somewhere on these lists.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 1,515,423 overall in books; last time, 1,979,059. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,624,429; last time, 1,515,423.

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.

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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Tagged as: Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Shohei Ohtani

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