Baseball Best-Sellers, February 3, 2023

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. (See my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks.”)

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” adult books (no romance/erotic fiction that features baseball as a theme although goodness knows there are a bunch of those available).

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. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

PRINT

1. Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Greatest Minds Creates Sport’s Biggest Mess, by Evan Drellich*
2. Baseball Prospectus 2023
3. The Fantasy Black Book 2023, by Joe Pisapia
4. The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman
5. Ron Shandler’s 2023 Baseball Forecaster
6. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
7. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
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, by H.A. Dorfman
10. Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide 2022

KINDLE BOOKS

1. Winning Fixes Everything
2. I Don’t Care If We Never Get Back: 30 Games in 30 Days on the Best Worst Baseball Road Trip Ever
3. A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics
4. Moneyball
5. Baseball Forecaster
6. October 1964
7. Baseball 100
8. How Baseball Happened
9. A Game of Extremes: 25 Exceptional Baseball Stories about What Happened on and off the Field
10. The Fantasy Black Book 2023

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. The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams
2. The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship
3. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
4. Winning Fixes Everything
5. Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original
6. The Baseball 100
7. The Science of Hitting
8. Heads-Up Baseball
9. The Bad Guys Won
10. The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham

Winning Fixes Everything, another book about the Houston Astros cheating scandal, contends for the BBS “triple crown,” appearing on all three lists. Nothing new apart from that.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,546,889 overall in books; last time, 2,359,118. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,422,517; last time, 2,412,535. 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.

Tagged as: Houston Astros