Baseball Best-Sellers, February 25, 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. 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 Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022, by Joe Pisapia
7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
8. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
9. Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson
10. The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond, by Michael Silverman

KINDLE BOOKS

1. Moneyball
2. Fantasy Baseball Black Book
3. Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play, by Bill White with Gordon Dillow
4. Baseball Prospectus
5. The Last Real Season, by Mike Shropshire
6. The Baseball 100
7. Judge Landis and 25 Years of Baseball, by J.G. Taylor Spink
8. Seasons in Hell, by Shropshire
9. The House That Ruth Built, by Robert Weintraub
10. The Giants of the Polo Grounds, by Noel Hynd

AUDIBLE

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. Ball Four
4. The Matheny Manifesto
5. Moneyball (abridged)
6. The Mental Game of Baseball
7. The Wax Pack, by Brad Balukjian
8. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
9. Heads-Up Baseball
10. The Science of Hitting

Practically a repeat of last week’s print list.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,379,864 overall in books; last time, 2,193,481. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,974,016; last time, 1,949,247.

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.