Baseball Best-Sellers, March 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. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
4. Ron Shandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster: & Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
5. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022, by Joe Pisapia
6. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
7. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
8. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
9. The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance, by H. A. Dorfman
10. Mind of a Superior Hitter: The Art, Science and Philosophy, by Michael McCree

KINDLE BOOKS

1. Baseball Prospectus
2. Moneyball
3. Baseball Forecaster
4. Summer of ’49, by David Halberstam
5. Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball’s First Century, by Tom Alesia
6. Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series: The Triumph of America’s Pastime, by Mark Frost
7. Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, The ’72 White Sox and a Transforming Chicago, by David Fletcher and John Owens
8. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2022
9. 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever, by Bill Madden
10. Uppity: My Untold Story About The Games People Play, by Bill White and Gordon Dillow

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. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
4. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
5. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
6. Ball Four
7. Wait Till Next Year, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
8. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen
9. Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask, by Jon Pessah
10. The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany

Nothing new under the sun. The only difference in the print top ten was the substitution of Mind of a Superior Hitter for Mental Game of Baseball.

Still not in the Amazon top-ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,329,348 overall in books; last time, 2,114,310. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 716,730 (#90 in Teen & Young Adult Baseball & Softball Nonfiction eBooks); last time, 1,771,868. I think the $1.99 price has something to do with the improvement.

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.