Baseball Best-Sellers, January 19, 2024

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 in 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 Amazon’s 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 out there).

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

1. Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
2. Baseball Prospectus 2024
3. Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics
4. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis
5. The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
6. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
7. The Bill James Baseball Handbook: Walk-Off Edition
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 Baseball 100, by Joe Posnanski
10. The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson, by Jeff Pearlman

KINDLE BOOKS

1. The Wingmen
2. Why We Love Baseball
3. The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship, by David Halberstam
4. You Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond, by Robert Whiting
5. The Era, 1947–1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World, by Roger Kahn
6. The Baseball 100
7. Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Takes a Swing at Baseball
8. Jeter Unfiltered, by Derek Jeter
9. The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024
10. The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH, by Shawn Green with Gordon McAlpine

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. Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton
2. Ballplayer, by Chipper Jones
3. Moneyball (unabridged, narrated by Scott Brick)
4. Why We Love Baseball
5. The Baseball 100
6. Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up, by Alex Speier
7. The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany with Jerry B. Jenkins
8. The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever, by Jack Curry (read by the author)
9. Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess, by Evan Drellich
10. Heads-Up Baseball, by Tom Hanson

Nothing new under the sun in the print list. Ho-hum.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 830,285 overall in books (#93 in Literary Bibliographies & Indexes); last time, 2,002,404.  Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,405,145; last time, 2,147,286.

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 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.