Baseball Best-Sellers, August 26, 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

Coming Home: My Amazin’ Life with the New York Mets, by Cleon Jones and Gary Kaschak
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit, by Ron Shelton
Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022
28: A Photographic Tribute to Buster Posey, by Brian Murphy with photos by Brad Mangin
Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess, by Evan Drellich (Feb. 2023 release)
Heads-Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, by Tom Hanson
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams with John Underwood

KINDLE BOOKS

Coming Home
The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers
Moneyball
The Church of Baseball
The Sputnik Season: 1957
Beauty at Short: Dave Bancroft, the Most Unlikely Hall of Famer and His Wild Times in Baseball’s First Century
Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition
Winning Fixes Everything
October 1964
The Teammates: A Portrait in Friendship

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.

Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
The Baseball 100
The Church of Baseball
The Yankee Years
Swing and a Hit: Nine Innings of What Baseball Taught Me
Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing
Ball Four: The Final Pitch
The Matheny Manifesto
Calico Joe
The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter

Several new titles on the list this week (finally). How appropriate is it that Cleon Jones’ book is #1 the day before the Mets host their Old-Timers game? Sweet! Nice to see the tribute to Posey, but surprised a similar tribute to Vin Scully isn’t anywhere to be seen, although The Voice: Vin Scully is Dodgers Baseball, produced by the Los Angeles Times, is due out in October to coincide with the World Series.

Obviously, I haven’t read Winning Fixes everything, given it won’t be out til next year. But how many books do we need going over the Astros cheating scandal?

Just an aside: Statistical Reasoning in Sports, which just missed the e-book cut, is selling for upwards of $90; the print edition is more than $160. I can’t understand why textbooks are so much more expensive that regular books? No wonder there’s so much student debt.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, right now it ranks at 2,872,350 overall in books; last time, 2,826,684. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 969,932; last time, 2,262,199. Still only $1.99 for the Kindle version.

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.