Baseball Best-Sellers, March 1, 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 (i.e., 12 and under). 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

Baseball Prospectus 2024
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, by Joe Posnanski
The Franchise: Atlanta Brave: A Curated History of the Braves, by Mark Bowman *
The Fantasy Baseball Black Book 2024, by Joe Pisapia
My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom, by Evan Roberts (available April 4)
The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams, by Adam Lazarus
Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien (available March 26)*
The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team That Helped Win World War II, by Anne R. Keene
Ron Shandler’s 2024 Baseball Forecaster and Encyclopedia of Fanalytics

KINDLE BOOKS

Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game, by Daniel Okrent
The Wingmen
Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, by Howard Bryant
Ball Four: 50th Anniversary Edition, by Jim Bouton
Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season, by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch
Why We Love Baseball
The Bad Guys Won, by Jeff Pearlman
Moneyball
The Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert Creamer

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
Charlie Hustle
Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball, by Keith Law
The Baseball 100
The Captain: A Memoir, by David Wright and Anthony DiComo
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams and John Underwood
Ball Four: The Final Pitch, by Jim Bouton (narrated by the author)
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, by Nicholas Dawidoff
The Methany Manifesto, by Mike Methany with Jerry B. Jenkins

Finally, some new items. Although how many books do we need about Pete Rose? Reading it now to see if it sheds any new light on this complicated situation.

Hard to believe we’re celebrating (well, some of us anyway) the 20th anniversary of the Red Sox breaking the Curse of the Bambino.

But to me, the most interesting appearance this week is Dan Okrent’s classic examination of baseball through a single game. It’s been done a few times since Nine Innings came out all the way back in 1985, including Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan, by Keith Hernandez and Mike Bryan (1994); The Game: One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair with Baseball, by Robert Benson (2001); and, most recently, Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, by Rob Neyer (2018). Given how much baseball has changed in just the past few years, I wonder when a new title taking these things into consideration might be coming out. I asked Neyer in an e-mail if he might do an update of Power Ball, but he said he had no plans for that. So I hereby offer to do so; interested publishers know where to find me.

Still not in the Amazon top ten? 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. FYI, as of this posting it ranks 1,627,796 overall in books; last time, 978,917. Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War ranks 2,849,591; last time, 2,824,288.

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.