Baseball Best-Sellers, February 10, 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. Baseball Prospectus 2023
2. The Fantasy Black Book 2023, by Joe Pisapia
3. The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman
4. The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
5. Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Greatest Minds Creates Sport’s Biggest Mess, by Evan Drellich
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. Ron Shandler’s 2023 Baseball Forecaster
8. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
9. The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book: A Collection of Amazing Trivia Quizzes and Fun Facts for Die-Hard Yankees Fans!, by Ray Walker
10. The Bill James Handbook 2023

KINDLE BOOKS

1. 1. Winning Fixes Everything
   2. A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics
   3. The Fantasy Black Book 2023
   4. The Wit and Wisdom of Yogi Berra
   5. Moneyball
   6. Baseball Forecaster
   7. How Baseball Happened
   8. Lou Boudreau: My Hall of Fame Life on the Field and Behind the Mic
   9. Baseball 100
   10. Yankees 1936–39, Baseball’s Greatest Dynasty: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and the Birth of a New Era

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 Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams
3. Winning Fixes Everything
4. The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship
5. The Baseball 100
6. Ball Four: The Final Pitch
7. The Bad Guys Won
8. Heads-Up Baseball
9. Baseball (Ward and Burns)
10. Coach: Lessons in the Game of Life

Note: Amazon lists The Athletic Baseball 2023 Fantasy: Win Your League! as #5 on the print list, but as I consider it a magazine, and not a book, I’ve excluded it. Blog mea, praecepta mea.

Nothing new, but look for that to change soon. In the past week, I’ve received advanced copies of five titles from University of Nebraska Press, including Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball, by Chris Donnelly; Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers, by Erick Sherman; Jazz Age Giant: Charles A. Stoneham and New York City Baseball in the Roaring Twenties, by Robert Garratt; One Season in Rocket City: How the 1985 Huntsville Stars Brought Minor League Baseball Fever to Alabama, by Dale Tafoya; and Baseball’s Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It, by Lee Lowenfish. Particularly interested in Donnelly’s book, as I lived through those turbulent Mets years.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,668,986 overall in books; last time, 2,546,889. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,429,030; last time, 2,422,517. 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, Ted Williams