Baseball Best-Sellers, September 8, 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 (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
The Last of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness, by Andy McCullough (pre-sale, release date May 7, 2024) *
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
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
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
The Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman
The Tao of the Backup Catcher: Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game, by Tim Brown with Eric Kratz
The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene

KINDLE BOOKS

The Baseball 100
Why We Love Baseball
The Last of His Kind
The Wingmen
Moneyball
The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Great Team in Pinstripe History, by Jack Curry
Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Jim Bouton
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, by Nicholas Dawidoff
Out of My League: A Rookie’s Survival in the Bigs, by Dirk Hayhurst
Mind of a Superior Hitter, by Michael McCree

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.

Why We Love Baseball
Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
A Damn Near Perfect Game: Reclaiming America’s Pastime, by Joe Jelly with Rob Bradford
Papi: My Story, by David Ortiz with Michael Holley
The Baseball 100
The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman
The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany with Jerry B. Jenkins
Calico Joe, by John Grisham
Banana Ball, by Jesse Kole with Don Yeager
Ninety Percent Mental, by Bob Tewksbury (read by the author)

The first book of 2024! The premise sounds quite interesting.I don’t know how many people think of greatness as a burden, but I can see how it could be. All the pressure to maintain that high level. According to the page on Amazon, the author is a senior writer at The Athletic who has been on the job since 2010. Sorry if 13 years doesn’t strike this old guy as all that impressive. I guess it’s all relative. But I wonder: if this book (and all pre-sale titles) hasn’t been released yet, how is it doing “better” than books that are currently available? I wish I knew how Amazon calculates these things.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 2,497,204 in Books overall in books; last time, 2,237,489. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,673,455; last time, 2,656,673.

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.