Baseball Best-Sellers, September 1, 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.az (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 (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. An asterisk denotes a book making its debut on the BBS list.

PRINT

Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski (pre-sale; available Sept. 5)
The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own: Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood, by Erin Carlson (pre-sale; available Sept. 5) *
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Greatest Minds Creates Sport’s Biggest Mess, by Evan Drellich
The Ultimate New York Yankees Trivia Book: A Collection of Amazing Trivia Quizzes and Fun Facts for Die-Hard Yankees Fans!, by Ray Walker
Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of The Savannah Bananas, by Jesse Cole with Don Yaeger
The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Great Team in Pinstripe History, by Jack Curry

KINDLE BOOKS

The Baseball 100
Why We Love Baseball
Moneyball
Maris & Mantle: Two Yankees, Baseball Immortality, and the Age of Camelot, by Tony Castro
The Wingmen
Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, by Bill Pennington
The Greatest Summer in Baseball History: How the ’73 Season Changed Us Forever, by John Rosengren
Smart, Wrong, and Lucky, by Jonathan Mayo
The Roger Angell Baseball Collection: The Summer Game, Five Seasons, and Season Ticket, by Roger Angell
Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing about It a Game, by Roger Kahn

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)
Why We Love Baseball
Winning Fixes Everything
Banana Ball
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (read by the author)
The Baseball 100
Calico Joe, by John Grisham
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America, by Posnanski
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, by Nicholas Dawidoff
The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany

Baseball and the movies, that’s my favorite combo, so greatly looking forward to the League of Their Own retrospective, coming out the same days as Joe Posnanski’s latest. Both of his books appear on all three lists. I think that’s a first: one author, two books, three lists.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,237,489 in Books overall in books; last time, 1,857,885. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,656,673; last time, 2,620,918.

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 dictionary; it has the other books in it. Which kind of reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows.

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.