Baseball Best-Sellers, February 4, 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

The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
Ron Shandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022, by Joe Pisapia
Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player, by Jeremy Beer
Against All Odds: The Atlanta Braves’ Improbable Journey to the 2021 World Series, by the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Swing and a Hit: Nine Innings of What Baseball Taught Me, by Paul O’Neill with Jack Curry
Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson

E-BOOKS

Moneyball
The Baseball 100
The Last Real Season, by Mike Shropshire
A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field, by Roy Lingster
The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022
The Captain and Me, by Ron Blomberg and Dan Epstein
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever, by Bill Madden
Oscar Charleston

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.

The Baseball 100
Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
Oscar Charleston
Moneyball (abridged edition)
Stealing Home, by Eric Nussbaum
The Baseball Codes, by Jason Turbow
The Science of Hitting

Sure, why not a book by Paul O’Neill? At first glance, I thought it would be an analysis of the game in general, similar to Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan (1994). But no, it’s all about O’Neill. Due for release on May 24.

Surprised there aren’t more book about African-American players since this is Black History Month. Beer’s bio of Oscar Charleston merits a triple crown of sorts, appearing on all three lists.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 1,505,428 overall in books; last time, 1,515,423. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,816,486; last time, 1,624,429.

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.