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
- Baseball Prospectus 2022
- Ron Shandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
- The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
- Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson
- The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
- Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
- The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
- Baseball America 2022 Almanac
- The 2022 Prospect Digest Handbook, by Joseph Werner
KINDLE BOOKS
- Baseball Prospectus
- Moneyball
- The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022
- The Baseball 100
- Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert Creamer
- 2020 NFHS Baseball Rules Book
- How Baseball Happened, by Thomas Gilbert
- Lords of the Realm, by John Helyar
- Ball Four
- The Captain and Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson, by Ron Blomberg and Dan Epstein
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.
- Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask, by Jon Pessah
- Chipper Jones: Ballplayer
- Till the End, by CC Sabathia
- Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
- The Baseball 100
- The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
- Ball Four
- The Mental Game of Baseball, by H.A. Dorfman
- Heads-Up Baseball
- Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
Play Ball! But nothing new here, save for the Baseball America Almanac.
Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 1,838,453 overall in books; last time, 1,152,213. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,629,801; last time, 1,134,502.
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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