Baseball Best-Sellers, April 22, 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. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
2. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
3. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
4. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
5. Good As Gold: My Eight Decades in Baseball, by Jim Kaat and Douglas Lyons
6. True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson, by Kostya Kennedy
7. If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Red Sox, by Jerry Remy
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. Moon Baseball Road Trips: The Complete Guide to All the Ballparks, with Beer, Bites, and Sights Nearby, by Timothy Malcolm

KINDLE BOOKS

1. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, by David Maraniss
2. Moneyball
3. Good As Gold
4. Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball’s First Century, by Tom Alesia
5. True
6. The Baseball 100
7. The Era: 1947-1957, by Roger Kahn
8. Opening Day: 50-for-50, by Michael Ortman
9. Baseball Prospectus 2022
   
10. If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Red Sox

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. Smart Baseball, by Keith Law
5. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter
6. If These Walls Could Talk: Boston Red Sox
7. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
8. How to Fix a Broken Game: The Rise of the Dodgers in a League on the Brink, by Pedro Moura
9. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
10. Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, by Charles Leerhsen

Look for a Bookshelf Conversation with Kostya Kennedy next week.

I find as I get older and my time is increasingly limited, I no longer have interest in things that might have captured my attention in the past. That’s the case — all due respect — with Jim Kaat’s new memoir. As individual as they are, such collections are basically the same: memories of people and events that should attract me, especially since Kaat played many of this years during my peak fandom. But alas, time is not infinite. I wonder how much new material he includes since the 2003 publication of Still Pitching: Musings from the Mound and the Microphone?

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,648,064 overall in books; last time, 2,576,583. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,017,410; last time, 2,002,847.

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.