Baseball Best-Sellers, May 20, 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. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
3. The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood
4. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
5. Mind of a Superior Hitter: The Art, Science and Philosophy, by Michael McCree
6. The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
7. In Scoring Position: 40 Years of a Baseball Love Affair, by Bob Ryan and Bill Chuck
8. Heads-Up Baseball, by Ken Ravizza
9. Swing and a Hit: Nine Innings of What Baseball Taught Me, by Paul O’Neill and Jack Curry
10. A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field, by Roy Lingster

KINDLE BOOKS

1. Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Baseball Immortality, and the Age of Camelot, by Tony Castro
2. Moneyball
3. Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball’s First Century, by Tom Alesia
4. The Captain and Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson, by Ron Blomberg and Dan Epstein
5. When Shea Was Home: The Story of the 1975 Mets, Yankees, Giants, and Jets, by Brett Topel
6. Warren Spahn: A Biography of the Legendary Lefty, by Lew Freedman
7. Yankees 1936–39, Baseball’s Greatest Dynasty: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and the Birth of a New Era, by Stanley Cohen
8. A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field, by Roy Lingster
9. A Game of Extremes
10. Ball Four, by Jim Bouton and Leonard Shecter

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. Calico Joe, by John Grisham
4. Ball Four: The Final Pitch
5. The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Perlman
6. The Matheny Manifesto, by Mike Matheny
7. Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury
8. The Science of Hitting
9. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
10. Swing and a Hit

Nothing new to make the list this week. Oh, well.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 1,406,116 overall in books; last time, 2,704,064. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 1,702,816; last time, 1,421,281.

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.