Baseball Best-Sellers, February 18, 2022

February 18, 2022

Of all things: I couldn’t post last week because the Amazon rankings weren’t available. Oh well.

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. Baseball Prospectus 2022
  2. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
  3. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
  4. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
  5. Ron Shandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
  6. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
  7. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
  8. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022, by Joe Pisapia
  9. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H. A. Dorfman
  10. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman

E-BOOKS

  1. Moneyball
  2. Baseball Prospectus
  3. How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed, by Thomas W. Gilbert
  4. The Baseball 100
  5. Cloudbuster Nine
  6. The Last Real Season, by Mike Shropshire
  7. The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball, by Frank Deford
  8. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
  9. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
  10. Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington

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. The Mental Game of Baseball
  4. Ball Four: The Final Pitch
  5. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
  6. Chipper Jones, Ballplayer
  7. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
  8. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
  9. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams
  10. The Cubs Way, by Tom Verducci

Just heard today that Topps was releasing its 2022 set so perhaps that’s why the the new Beckett book appears on the list. Don’t know if I’ll get it this year; the 2021 set was a disappointment. I bought it because a) it reflected the Covid season of 2020, and b) it was the 75th anniversary edition.

Other than that everything is pretty status quo.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,193,481 overall in books; last time (two weeks ago), 1,505,428. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,949,247; last time, 1,816,486.

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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